


Binding Magic

by chiiyo86



Series: Binding Magic [1]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, Curses, F/M, M/M, Mutual Pining, Nightmares, Polyamory, Post-The Blood of Olympus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-10 04:25:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 58,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13494930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiiyo86/pseuds/chiiyo86
Summary: To give himself and Nico another chance at friendship, Percy offers Nico to go on a quest with Annabeth and him. It's easy monster hunting, but the chain of events that starts from this point will completely upset their lives as the shadow of a curse unearthes unwanted feelings.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this before reading _Trials of Apollo_ , and although I have now read the books the fic still ignores the events of that series, except for a few elements I borrowed.

Camp Half-Blood during the off season was a quiet place, but Nico actually preferred it that way. The camp weather magic had let through just enough snow to dust the cabins' roofs and whiten the paths. From the tallest hill the Athena Parthenos, the statue that Nico had almost killed himself to bring here, overlooked the camp as a silent guardian of gold and alabaster. A few of the all-year-round campers had started a snow fight despite the fact that there wasn't really enough snow to make good snowballs, and Nico could hear their shrieks of delight at his back as he walked to the mess hall for dinner. Nymphs and satyrs were coming from the woods and the meadow, and a few of them nodded at him. Nico nodded back; in the past few months he'd spent more time at Camp than ever before and yet it still felt strange to be acknowledged without fear or disgust.

In the open pavilion of the mess hall the torches at the columns and the fire from the central brazier burned brightly, giving away enough warmth to counter the winter cold from outside. A few of the Ares campers who'd been snow fighting stumbled into the pavilion, shoving at each other, their noses and cheeks red from the cold and their eyes sparkling from their fight. Small clusters of campers trickled in and Nico noticed that there were more people than usual, although not as much as during summer. Nico stepped over the crack on the floor he'd made years ago to send skeletons back to the Underworld, and settled at his table as he pondered this. He was jerked out of his thoughts when someone else sat across him. 

He didn't jump; when you spent as much as he did among ghosts and shadows, you had to learn how to control your startle reflex if you didn't want to give yourself an early heart attack. He was surprised, though. He didn't always eat alone--when Jason was there he insisted on Nico coming to his table, and Will Solace sometimes invited him at the Apollo table--but no one but his sister Hazel on her occasional visits ever sat at table 13. He was even more surprised when he looked up and was met with sea-green eyes and messy dark hair.

"Hey," said Percy Jackson. "Mind if I sit here?"

He was already sitting, which made the question more of a rhetorical one. Nevertheless, Nico opened his palm in an inviting gesture and pretended Percy had really given him a choice. 

"Make yourself at home."

"So," Percy said, looking nervously around him as if he feared--or hoped--someone else would come and join in. "Cold out here, isn't it?"

Where was Annabeth? It was rare to ever see them without each other. And sure enough, Annabeth was sitting a few tables away with a couple of her siblings. Which meant that even with Annabeth here, Percy had chosen to come sit at Nico's table. It was better tolerated than it used to be, especially for the children of the Big Three who would otherwise spend all of their meals alone. _This_ situation, though, Nico and Percy sitting with each other without anyone to act as a buffer, was a new and alarming one.

"It's winter," Nico said, deciding he would play along with Percy's stupid small talk for the moment. "It tends to be cold in the winter."

"Yeah, of course. I just, I always wondered, why let the snow fall inside the camp? It could be all nice and warm here."

"I guess it feels more Christmas-y. Oh."

"Oh, what?"

"That's why you're here. It's Christmas break."

That explained why there were more people than usual. The battles of the recent years had bonded the campers tightly together, and a lot of them came to spend part of their holidays at Camp instead of waiting until summer to return. It didn't explain why Percy was sitting at Nico's table, looking awkward. It wasn't as if-- _Oh, gods_. A sudden realization made Nico's heart start racing. They hadn't been alone with each other since Nico's confession a few months ago. Nico's cheeks burned at the memory of how brazen he'd acted and how stunned Percy had looked. They hadn't exchanged more than a few words since then, and always with a lot of other people present. Nico didn't feel like he'd actively tried to avoid Percy, but now he was wondering if he hadn't subconsciously done just that. 

"You okay?" Percy asked.

This time Nico came very close to jumping. "Yeah," he said. And then, reluctantly, "Was there anything you wanted to tell me?"

"Well, yeah, I--"

He cut himself off because the nymphs arrived at that moment to serve the food. It gave Nico enough time to consider simply standing up and running away, but first, it would make him look like a total idiot, and second, where would he even go? Percy knew where he slept. And he couldn't avoid talking to Percy forever. The demigod world was a small one, and they were bound to see a lot of each other throughout their lives. 

"Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about something," Percy said once the nymphs were gone. His cheeks were flushed with embarrassment and it made Nico feel a little better to see that he wasn't the only one uncomfortable. "It's, hmm, a little personal."

Nico sighed. "I think I can see where you're going with this, so why don't you just come out and say it?"

"It's about the thing you told me. You know, at the end of summer?" he added as if Nico was in the habit of delivering regular speeches to him. "I didn't tell anyone else, by the way. I didn't think--I know you're a private guy."

"You could have. I didn't particularly mean this to be a secret," Nico said, but in truth he was relieved to hear it. People at camp were just getting used to his presence and he didn't need another reason to stand out.

"Annabeth knows, obviously. I think Jason knows too because he said some weird things to me, but he didn't hear it from me, I swear."

"Jason does know. He knew long before I told you anything."

"Really?" Percy said, frowning unhappily. "Oh."

"He discovered it on accident. We--" Nico trailed off. The episode with Cupid wasn't one he liked to revisit. "It's a long story. Anyway, it shouldn't concern you. It's not contagious, you know. The way I feel-- _felt_ \--about you doesn't make _you_ gay."

He hadn't meant to sound so biting and accusatory, and felt a flicker of shame when he saw the dismay fan out on Percy's face. 

"That's not--I didn't mean," Percy stuttered. "That's not why I wanted to talk to you."

" _Why_ did you want to talk to me?"

"I just--" Percy's hands fluttered uncertainly. "You just came to me and blurted that out, and then we never talked again. About that, or about anything. I had _no_ idea you'd ever felt that way about me. It's nothing to do with you being--gay. I don't care about that. It's just, I kind of thought you hated me, you know?"

"You thought--" Nico started and then shut his mouth. It wasn't very surprising that Percy had thought Nico hated him. Nico _had_ hated him, in a way--and himself, and everything. He took a deep breath. "Okay. Okay. What do you want to know?"

"Uhh." Percy chuckled nervously. "I didn't exactly come with a list of questions. I just thought we should talk so this wouldn't stand between us like a very awkward ghost. But, well--how long? Did you already know…"

"You want to know if you were my first love?" Nico had said the words very softly, and he felt viciously glad when he saw Percy turn crimson at them. "To answer your questions: since the beginning, pretty much. Since the moment you defended me and Bianca against the Manticore, although I didn't really understand it at the time. I hadn't known I liked boys then, or that it was even something that could happen. And you weren't completely wrong, you know. I did hate you. I hated the fact that you made me feel that way."

"Oh. Right. Thanks for being honest, I guess. So, do you--"

"I told you I was over it," Nico said a little too sharply.

"No, I get that. I meant the 'hate' part. Do you still hate me? Because I don't want that. I want us to be friends."

Percy said it so earnestly that it threw Nico for a loop. He could feel his old demons churning under the surface. _Why?_ he wanted to say. _Maybe I don't want to be your friend. I don't need you. Get away from me._ He made himself get a grip on his emotions. He could do this, he told himself. He could become Percy's friend, and then he would know for sure that he was really over him. 

"I don't hate you," he said. "We can--we can be friends."

Percy's smile should have come with a warning. "Great!" he said, looking so genuinely happy it made Nico suspicious. "Then what do you think about going on a quest with me and Annabeth?"

"A--what?" Nico stammered. He hadn't expected Percy's offer of friendship to require something of him so soon. "What sort of quest?"

"Oh, something small. There's a monster ravaging fields in Indiana. I heard rumors and went to talk to Chiron about it, but Annabeth and me need a third. It's tradition, even if we still can't get prophecies from Rachel."

"And you can't ask--" 

Nico looked around to see if any of Percy's friends were there to act as a third, but there wasn't anyone. Grover was on a Council of Cloven mission, Jason and Piper were in California, Leo was off with Calypso on a trip around the world, and Hazel and Frank were, of course, back at Camp Jupiter. Which left Nico, a sort-of-friend who could act as a third wheel. 

"You could ask Clarisse," Nico said.

"Dude, I like Clarisse, I do--better than I used to, at least," Percy said with a grimace. "But--" He frowned, as if coming to a realization. "I'm not asking you because I have no one else to ask, if that's what you're thinking. I'm asking because I want _you_ to come."

"I didn't-"

"You don't have to say yes. I just wanted to ask someone I could trust to have my and Annabeth's backs. Think about it, man."

"Okay, fine."

Nico looked down at his empty plate. Neither of them had touched the food, so Nico helped himself with bread and cheese and fruit, and went to give his father his burnt offering, Percy shuffling along behind him. _Father, I_ \--Nico threw food into the fire but didn't finish his thought. Asking Hades for friendship advice felt like asking a blind man to explain colors to him. Nico could have asked Jason, but Jason wasn't there. Nico knew what he would say, though: Jason would tell Nico that sometimes he needed to take a risk.

"Okay," he told Percy when they were back at the table. "I'll come with you and Annabeth."

"Really? Awesome! We'll go talk to Chiron about it tomorrow."

"Sure."

"I'll be fun, you'll see."

Nico wasn't so sure about that, but he decided not to voice out his doubts. If he wanted to give this friendship thing a try, then he probably needed to keep the downer comments to a minimum. Still, he couldn't quell the edge of uneasiness poking at the pit of his stomach.

\---

After dinner, Annabeth joined Percy at the campfire. She sat down and burrowed against his side as if they were fighting for space with a crowd of other people even though there was no one in their immediate vicinity. 

"Hey," she said. "How did it go?"

Percy immediately glanced around for Nico, and saw him on the other side of the fire. He was sitting by himself, but from time to time other people addressed him or passed him marshmallow to roast. His silhouette didn't stand out against the shadows at his back like other people, but instead he seemed to be melting into them and it was hard to say where he ended and where the shadows started. Percy wondered if he should go and join him, but Nico hadn't really encouraged Percy to follow him after dinner and Percy didn't want to push him too hard so early in their fresh start at friendship.

"It went okay, I guess," Percy said. "He said he agreed to come with us on the quest."

"That's good. Did you get to talk about the other stuff?"

"Yeah. He said-" Percy thought back to the conversation, still feeling weirdly flustered about it. "He said he used to hate me, actually."

Annabeth sat so close to him that when she moved her head, her hair brushed against Percy's cheek. "Hated you? But I thought he had a crush on you."

"Well, you know what they say about love and hate. Apparently I was the first guy he'd ever-you know."

Annabeth rolled her eyes at him; her face was swathed in flickering shadows, but Percy could still tell. "Don't be twelve, Percy. Say the word."

"Fine, _mom_ ," Percy said, rolling his eyes too. "I was the first guy he _liked_ , and I guess he hated that I was bringing this out."

"He was born in the thirties. It couldn't have been easy to come to terms with being gay."

"Yeah."

Annabeth nudged him in the ribs, not very gently. "What's with the gloomy face?"

"I don't know, I feel bad. I think I haven't been fair to Nico, and--"

"Hey, for the record, I don't agree with this. I think you've always done the best you could by him. If I suggested you ask Nico about the quest, it's because I could tell the whole situation with him bothered you."

"We owe him for Tartarus and Bob."

"I know," Annabeth said. "Believe me, I haven't forgotten about Tartarus. I'm aware we would have died there if not for him. But we can't become friends with Nico merely out of gratitude. That wouldn't be fair to him either."

"No, of course not. It's not just about gratitude. I really want us to be friends."

"Okay, then we'll see how this quest goes and work from there."

"Yeah, you're right."

Percy had heard about the monster they were going to fight, but Annabeth had been the one to say they should make it their quest. Since the fight with Gaia, they had been taking it easy. Percy figured they'd deserved it after the past couple of years, but he felt guilty too. After Gaia had been defeated the rest of her forces, the monsters she'd managed to let out of Tartarus, had scattered across the continent and were making themselves known from time to time. Percy knew that Camp Jupiter made regular patrols; he knew _Nico_ had regularly gone monster hunting, and he certainly deserved to take it easy too. Percy pushed the thought back. Annabeth was right: if Percy really wanted to give friendship with Nico a chance, he shouldn't make it all about his guilt. 

"You're so smart," he told Annabeth, kissing the top of her head.

"Of course I am," she said. "I've always been smart."

"Not always about emotions and stuff. I think hanging out with Piper has done you good."

"Hey," Annabeth said, elbowing him in the ribs again. "Look who's talking."

Percy winced theatrically for good measure, then leaned back against Annabeth when he was sure he wouldn't be targeted with violence again. He let himself enjoy the fire, the camp songs and the too-sweet smell of roasting marshmallow.

The next morning, he headed to the Big House with Annabeth to talk with Chiron about the quest. A few Hephaistos kids had come back for the break and they were already hard at work at the forge, their fire creating a pleasant bubble of warmth in the wintery cold when Percy and Annabeth walked past it. On a hunch, Percy glanced back at the cabins and saw that Nico was coming their way, a narrow black figure against the snow-white ground. 

"Hey, Nico's coming, let's wait for him," he told Annabeth.

When Nico had joined them and greeted them with a terse nod, they walked together to the Big House. Despite the cold, Chiron was on the porch sitting in his fake wheelchair and playing a game of solitaire. Percy thought he looked lonely without Mr. D to play with; they'd all expected the god to come back after they defeated Gaia, but he hadn't. If Chiron knew why, he wasn't saying. 

"Percy, Annabeth," Chiro said, pushing away from the table. "And Nico. I'm guessing you'll be the third member of this journey. Hmm. With two children of the Big Three, you're going to attract a lot of monsters."

"In that case," Nico said, already turning away.

Percy caught him by the collar of his jacket. "Chiron, come on," he protested. "You know we can handle it."

"Oh, I know. The three of you together can probably handle most dangers. I was just stating a fact. But come on in, don't stay out in the cold."

They settled in the comfy living room, where the stony fireplace gave a pleasant warmth to the room. Seymour, the stuffed leopard head that hung above the mantel, was snoring softly, the sound reminding Percy of a small chainsaw.

Once they were sitting in the leather couches, Chiron asked, "Do you know exactly what you're facing? I don't think you told me, Percy."

"I heard the story from a classmate," Percy said. Chiron and Annabeth already knew this, so he was speaking more for Nico's benefit. "His grandmother has a farm in Indiana, and she said that lately they've had a lot of problems with animals ravaging their fields."

"Couldn't it really be animals?" Nico asked, sounding skeptical.

"Well, there's actually a few witnesses," Percy answered easily, because Annabeth had said the same thing at first. "And they said they saw one huge beast. They called it a dog, but even then they seemed to find it strange that it could be so big. Also, I had a dream that I think relates to this--well, the dream wasn't super specific because the scene was happening at night and I couldn't see the monster very well. It definitely wasn't a dog, though, because it had horns." 

"It sounds straightforward," Chiron said, "but without a prophecy to guide you, you'll have to be cautious."

"I've gone monster hunting before," Nico said. "Generally on my own."

Chiron studied him for a moment. "I know, Nico. I just have a feeling about this quest."

Well, that sounded ominous, and Percy had been the target of ominousness often enough to last him a few lifetimes. It almost made him declare the whole thing off, because if something bad was going to happen he didn't want to be the one to drag Annabeth and Nico into it. But danger was a part of their lives whether they liked it or not and neither Annabeth nor Nico would take his chivalry well, so he kept that thought to himself.

"Doesn't that sound fun," he said instead.

"We'll figure out what it is when we get there," Annabeth said. "The question is: _how_ do we get there?"

"Nico, could you shadow-travel us?" Percy asked. When Nico didn't say anything, he added hurriedly, "Not in one jump, of course. I know it's very taxing on you."

Chiron was looking at Nico as if waiting to see what he would say, and Percy felt like he was missing some element of context. 

"I--can't," Nico said slowly. 

"Oh."

Percy shared a look with Annabeth, who shrugged almost imperceptibly. Neither of them had heard anything about Nico losing his shadow-traveling power, and Percy wondered if Nico was being difficult on purpose. It didn't seem like the sort of thing he would do, though, even if he were still annoyed that Percy had talked him into this quest. 

As if he'd read his thoughts, Nico scowled. "It's not that I don't want to," he said, "but I really shouldn't. Since this summer, my powers have been--it could misfire, that's all. I need more time to recover before I can safely shadow-travel. I don't want to send us into the heart of a volcano."

"Because that's, like, a thing that can happen?" Percy asked, wincing.

"It's happened before," Nico said with the hint of a smile, as if remembering something funny. 

What could be funny in a story that had 'volcano' as a punchline, Percy wasn't sure. 

"Then we could go on pegasus, maybe?" Annabeth said in her brisk, mission-planning voice. 

"Ah, uh." Percy glanced at Nico. "Not sure this is the best option."

Animals tended to shy away from Nico, and Percy had heard the pegasi complain that he smelled like death. Although apparently demigods in general smelled weird to them, so maybe the pegasi weren't the best scent critics there were. 

"Can we get a car?" Nico asked. 

"Well, I can get my mom's car," Percy said. "But I haven't got my license yet."

"Me neither," Annabeth said.

"Not a problem," Nico said. "If you can get us a car, I can provide us with a chauffeur."

He wouldn't tell them more about it, no matter how much Percy and Annabeth nagged him. It gave Percy the feeling that this wasn't an option they were going to like, but then he didn't have any better idea. After they'd hashed out a few other details and as they left the Big House, Percy told Nico, trying to be encouraging, "I don't care what Chiron said. I'm sure things will go great."

Nico gave him a look that was only slightly warmer than winter frost. "I guess we'll see," he said and then walked way, his shoulders hunched and his hands shoved deep in his pockets. 

Annabeth patted Percy on the shoulder. "Keep trying," she said, not without sympathy but a bit laughingly too.

"Oh, shut up," Percy said without bite. 

Really, Percy still couldn't reconcile Nico's attitude toward him the whole time they'd known each other--neutrally helpful at best, hatefully angry at worst--with the notion that Nico had been at some point _in love_ with him, and for a long time. Maybe Nico had just lied about it for some unfathomable reason. 

"Who do you think Nico's chauffeur is?" Annabeth asked, maybe trying to distract him.

"No clue," Percy said with a shrug. "Who knows, maybe it's one of Nico's skeletons." 

The next morning, it turned out that Percy hadn't been far off the mark: their chauffeur was a French zombie named Jules-Albert, who'd lost some racecar at the end of the nineteenth century and had been called back straight from the Underworld by Nico's powers. Sometimes Percy kind of hated himself. 

\---

Jules-Albert the zombie chauffeur didn't smell like a dead body, and Annabeth wondered if it was an effect of Nico's powers or if it was just the way zombies were. She was grateful for the lack of rotting smell, but the sight of the zombie's greyish decomposing skin was still very off-putting. Jules-Albert had a thick moustache and Percy had said it looked like a rat that had died on his upper lip--which meant that Annabeth couldn't unsee it, now. Nico had heard Percy's comment and asked him to be mindful of Jules-Albert's feelings. His delivery had been so deadpan that it was hard to tell whether he was joking.

"He's a gift from my dad," he'd explained. 

"I think I prefer my mom's gifts," Annabeth said doubtfully, thinking of her invisible cap. 

Nico's lips quirked as if he were containing a smile. "Rotting zombie or not, Jules-Albert has excellent driving skills. It's all we need from him." 

"We also need him to remember that the other passengers in the car are still alive," Percy said, giving Jules-Albert a wary once over.

Nico had claimed the passenger's seat--not that Annabeth and Percy had wanted to fight him for the privilege--and they were now driving out of New York City, stuck in snail-paced traffic. It would take them about twelve hours to reach their destination, and they'd decided that since Jules-Albert didn't need rest they might as well do it in one shot while Annabeth, Percy and Nico slept in the car. 

Nico wasn't saying much, but it wasn't an uncomfortable silence. Annabeth and Percy were entertaining themselves with playing "I Spy", the Greek mythology version. 

"I Spy with my little eye… something related to Poseidon."

"Of course you do, Seaweed Brain. Hmm, is it the surfing board two cars up the line?"

Percy groaned. "You're too good at this game."

"Your choices are too easy, that's all. My turn, now. I Spy with my little eye… something related to Bellona."

"Reyna's mom?"

Annabeth saw Nico glance back, as though the name had caught his attention. Until now, he'd been watching out the window and not paying their game any mind.

"Hey, are we doing Roman gods too?" Percy was protesting. "Because I'm not sure I'm ready for that."

"Nico, are you sure you don't want to play?" Annabeth asked. "Help me destroy Percy."

"Destroy Percy? Hmm, that's tempting."

"What do you mean, destroy me? It's not fair if you're teaming up against me!" Percy said, but Annabeth could tell he was pleased that Nico was joining in. "And how would that even work?"

"Three cars down the lane next to us," Nico said. "The orange car with red flames painted on the hood. Bellona is sometimes represented with a torch of red-blood flames."

"Well done," Annabeth said, nodding her approval. 

"How was I supposed to know that?" Percy said, pouting.

"You should try to learn more about your friends' parents," Annabeth said, giving him a light shove.

Percy shoved back, and it turned into a brief tickling fight, which Annabeth won because she knew all of Percy's many ticklish spots and was vicious about using them against him. Then Annabeth caught a glimpse of Nico's dark eyes in the rearview mirror as he watched them and she suddenly felt self-conscious. 

"Nico," she said, trying to cover for her momentary awkwardness. "Your turn."

They played for a long time, until the traffic became reduced almost to nothing and it made the game pointless. Nico was observant and his knowledge of mythology rivaled Annabeth's; the both of them beat Percy to the ground. Percy complained endlessly about it, but Annabeth knew he was happy Nico was loosening up. As the hours passed and the different landscapes flickered at the car's windows, they played a few other games and listened to the radio when Nico's fiddling managed to get them a station they all enjoyed. They only made a couple of stops for lunch and gas, not wanting to get there too late. 

As daylight started to fade Annabeth fell asleep, and woke up an undetermined amount of time later to a silent car. Percy was drooling on her shoulder, fast asleep, and Jules-Albert still had all of his inhuman focus on the road. Nico was silent too, and Annabeth thought he was sleeping as well until she saw his eyes again in the mirror, wide open. 

"Did you sleep at all?" she whispered, mindful of Percy breathing softly against her neck. 

Nico shook his head. "Can't sleep as long as Jules-Albert is here," he said in the same tone. 

"Why didn't you say something?"

"It's fine. I can sleep when we get there. We only have two hours or so left before we reach Buck Creek."

Annabeth cautiously stretched her legs. She'd slept soundly, but her limbs ached from so much time sitting in a cramped space. 

"Thanks for coming with us," she said. 

He moved his head so she couldn't see his eyes anymore, only a shock of black hair. 

"There're a lot of other people who could have come with you," he said. 

"Maybe, but I'm still glad you accepted. I know it means a lot to Percy."

Nico didn't say anything for a long moment, and the silence was only filled by the hum of the car eating the asphalt. 

"You two act like I saved your life in Tartarus," he finally said.

"You did. You don't--" She'd been about to say, _You don't know what it was like, down there_ , but remembered just in time that he did know. "We couldn't have made it without Bob."

"Then Bob is the one who saved you," Nico said. "I don't feel comfortable taking the credit from him."

"I'm not saying we don't owe him our lives, because we do and I could never…" Annabeth trailed off, feeling herself getting choked up. Bob was out of their reach, but Nico was there, alive. They could do right by him. "But he would never have come to help us if you--if it hadn't been for you."

After Percy and she had come back from Tartarus, Annabeth had thanked Nico for convincing Bob that they were worth saving. But, she was realizing it now, Bob had only mentioned Nico talking about _Percy_. Annabeth had gotten so used to thinking of Percy and herself as a unit that she'd overlooked that fact. Nico had been so lonely that an amnesiac Titan turned janitor was the only person he could talk to about the boy he loved. 

"You can sleep some more," Nico said. "I'll wake you up when we get there. I'll keep an eye out for a decent motel once we get close to Buck Creek."

Annabeth had meant to stay awake to keep Nico company, but Percy was warm and comfortable and his rhythmic breathing lulled her back to sleep. When she woke up again, she saw that Nico had stopped them at a Motel 6. The glowing sign with the big red '6' shone like a beacon in the night. 

"It's cheap," Nico said with a shrug at the motel. "We're about 6 miles from Buck Creek."

Jules-Albert was nowhere to be seen, having probably been sent back by Nico into the depths of the Underworld. Annabeth was relieved that the zombie wasn't supposed to stay with them the whole time. 

"Hey, sleepy head," she said to Percy, nudging him with her shoulder. "It's time to wake up."

He groaned, his face scrunching from the effort to wake up. His drool had left a darker wet spot on her clothes, but he looked so adorably tousled and drowsy as he blinked and rubbed his face that she couldn't find it in herself to be disgusted. 

"Where are we?" he asked, stifling a yawn. 

"At a Motel 6 a few miles from Buck Creek. Nico has sent Jules-Albert back for a nap in the Underworld."

"Thank the gods," Percy mumbled. 

"Such prejudices against the dead," Nico said. 

Annabeth being the only one with a credit card, she had to pay for the double room they needed. The room was narrow but clean, furnished with two queen-sized beds with parsley bedspreads, matching curtains, a table and two chairs in a corner of the room, and an old bulky TV they could watch from the beds. 

"Any preference about the bed?" Percy asked Nico, who shrugged. 

Annabeth claimed the bed nearest to the bathroom in her and Percy's names, and Nico dropped himself and his backpack on the other bed, toeing off his boots. Exhaustion made him look faded, like an old photograph from the time period of his birth. 

"I want a shower," Percy said. He stretched his arms and his sweater and t-shirt lifted, uncovering a sliver of his stomach. "Anyone else wants to use the bathroom?"

"I'm fine," Annabeth said, sitting on her bed with her back to the headboard. "I'll shower in the morning."

"Nico?"

Nico didn't answer, and when Annabeth looked his way she saw that he had curled up on his bed over the bedspread, having taken off only his jacket, scarf and shoes. 

"He had to stay awake for Jules-Albert, so he didn't sleep at all in the car," Annabeth told Percy. 

Percy walked up to Nico's bed and then stopped, watching him sleep for a moment. 

"He looks so different when he's sleeping," Percy said softly. It was true; Nico's sleeping face was relaxed and peaceful, making him look his age--a not yet fifteen-year-old kid. "C'mon, give me our bedspread. I don't want him to get cold."

Annabeth untucked the bedspread and handed it to Percy, who threw it over Nico. While Percy was showering Annabeth undressed and slipped into bed. She fell asleep to the soothing sound of the running water from Percy's shower. 

\--- 

Nico woke up when something hard hit the window. He sat up in his bed, pushing away the bedspread that had somehow managed to wrap itself around him. The noise happened again, confirming that it hadn't been part of Nico's dream, then again and again, sharp sounds like pebbles being thrown at the glass pane. Was it hailing, or--

"Did you hear that?" Percy said from the other bed. "Something is--"

This was when the window exploded. Nico, being on the bed closest to it, was showered with broken glass.

"Nico!" he heard Percy yell. 

Something flew inside the room. Nico rolled out of bed, grabbed his sword and slashed at the flying thing, instinctively trying to protect his face. It looked like a monstrous pigeon, but then it shot one of its feathers like an arrow and the feather grazed Nico's shoulder, razor-blade sharp. 

"Oh, Styx," he heard Annabeth curse. "Not again!"

Nico glanced back and saw that Percy and Annabeth had jumped out of bed too and were both armed, Percy with Riptide and Annabeth with her drakon bone sword. More birds had dashed into the room on the wake of the first, and soon enough the place was a chaos of flapping wings and shooting feathers. The birds--Stymphalian birds, probably--had sharp bronze beaks and they seemed to be trying to pierce Nico's eyes, but it was hard for Nico and his friends to fight them off without stabbing each other at the same time. When Nico narrowly missed being beheaded by Percy's Riptide, he yelled, "We need to get out this room! We're in each other's way and they just keep coming!"

Percy and Annabeth shouted their assent, and together they fought their way to the door and then emerged on the motel's parking lot. It was bitterly cold outside and none of them had their shoes on, but the sight of the flock of birds flitting over their heads made the cold a remote consideration. 

"So you fought those things before?" Nico asked Annabeth and Percy. "Any weak point that could be useful to us now?"

"We got them with terrible music," Percy said. "But I don't see how…"

He couldn't finish his sentence because more birds were flying at them and Percy had to duck a cruel bronze beak. Nico, Percy and Annabeth gathered back to back and started slashing through the attacking birds, but there didn't seem to be an end to them and their cloud of shooting feathers was hard to avoid, marking Nico and the other two with thin red lines all over their bodies. The cold ground was covered with feathers from the birds they'd killed, but it still wasn't enough. And even if they managed to handle the birds, the cold was going to get them soon. There had to be a way to get rid of them other than killing every single one. Terrible music, Percy had said. It matched the story of Hercules frightening them with a _krotala_ that Nico knew. But how could they play music here? Unless--

"I have an idea!" he shouted to Percy and Annabeth. "Cover for me."

He kneeled down and put a hand flat on the ground. It felt so cold it ached. Percy and Annabeth, instead of wasting time asking him what he was doing, had closed ranks around him and kept fighting the birds. Despite their protection, a feather flew past their guards from time to time and slashed at Nico, but Nico's senses were turned deep into the ground and he could barely feel it. After a few seconds, the ground cracked and Jules-Albert clawed out. 

"Jules-Albert," Nico said. "Sing something for us, please."

Jules-Albert didn't talk much, but on the one occasion Nico had heard him sing he'd sworn to himself never to repeat the experience. But then, desperate times call for desperate measures. The zombie's voice rose, deep and creaking like an old iron gate, the French words horribly mangled on a tune so off-key that Apollo must have wailed in despair somewhere in the world. 

_Quand nous chanterons le temps des cerises,_  
Et gai rossignol, et merle moqueur  
Seront tous en fête! 

__

__

__

Panic struck the Stymphalian birds, who started fluttering confusedly, some of them crashing into each other in their hurry to get away from the noise. Percy and Annabeth had covered their ears, wincing but watching the birds' distress with a smile.

_J'aimerai toujours le temps des cerises  
Et le souvenir que je garde au cooooooeeeuur!_

By the time Jules-Albert had finished the song, all the birds they hadn't killed had flown away, leaving the parking lot silent and deserted.

"Well done, Nico!" Percy exclaimed, raising his hand for a high five; after a second of hesitation, Nico clapped his palm against Percy's.

"What the hell was that?"

A white pot-bellied man in striped pajamas was standing at the door of one of the rooms. Nico, Annabeth and Percy turned to look at him, struck dumb in the aftermath of their fight.

"What do you mean, sir?" Annabeth asked politely.

Percy had capped Riptide, but Annabeth and Nico still had their swords in their hands. Thanks to the Mist, the man probably wasn't seeing them as swords, but the scene still must seem very strange to him. Maybe they looked like they'd just had a violent game of hockey. 

"I mean that horrible noise, like, like a donkey being tortured to death! What are you kids doing out in the cold anyway?" he added, as if he'd only realized now that they were standing outside very lightly dressed and with no shoes on. 

"Uhh, we heard the noise too," Percy said. "But yeah, no idea what it was. Strange, right?"

"Yeah." The man was still eyeing them warily, but he looked concerned too, now. "You should get back to your room. You'll freeze to death if you don't."

Nico noticed that Percy and Annabeth's lips were turning blue and he started ushering them toward their room. Cold temperatures didn't bother him as much as most people and he still had his jeans on, so he wasn't very worried about himself, but Annabeth was wearing socks and long-sleeved pajamas and Percy was even worse off, having only a Camp Half-Blood t-shirt, ratty boxer shorts and his socks on.

"Come on, you two, he's right," Nico said. "I don't think the noise will be bothering you again, sir! You should go back to bed too."

No one wants to stand in the cold and investigate strange noises if they don't have to, so the man didn't linger much longer and went back into his room. Once Percy and Annabeth had retreated inside too, Nico thanked Jules-Albert for his help and sent him to the Underworld. Back to the room, he saw that one of his friends had drawn the curtains on the broken window to try to keep the cold at bay. Even then, it was still uncomfortably drafty inside. 

Percy was examining his slashed t-shirt with a disgruntled expression. "It's ruined," he said and then took it off and started rummaging through his bag for a new shirt. 

There was one long cut right over Percy's left nipple. Nico's mouth had gone dry and he hurriedly looked away, his face warm, when he realized he'd been staring. Apparently, Percy thought that since Nico had said he was over him, it meant that the sight of a half-naked boy wouldn't affect him--or maybe he didn't think at all, which was just as likely. Unfortunately, if Nico had once hoped that Percy was a fluke and that he was capable of being attracted to girls, he knew better by now. Annabeth undressing in front of him would have been less embarrassing. 

"Go change in the bathroom, you exhibitionist," Annabeth said, and Nico wondered if she'd caught his reaction. "Wait, I'll go with you, get a look at those cuts."

"You've been cut too," Percy said.

"Well, then get inside, come on!"

The bathroom door closed behind them, leaving Nico on his own in the room, which was a relief. He examined his t-shirt and decided it wasn't damaged badly enough for him to throw it away. Blood was unnoticeable on black clothes. His arms and face were covered in thin cuts and Nico thought that he might clean them with water once Percy and Annabeth were done in the bathroom. He didn't have any first-aid stuff in his bag, or even nectar or ambrosia--he'd gotten used to living according to the principle that if something didn't kill you, it would heal well enough on its own.

From the bathroom, he could hear the rumble of Percy and Annabeth's conversation and then some muffled laughter. He imagined a shirtless Percy braced against the sink in the narrow bathroom, Annabeth cleaning his cuts. He shook his head, trying to get rid of the image. It was one thing to stare a bit when Percy took off his shirt--Nico was pretty sure that any straight boy would have the same reaction to a girl undressing, even one he wasn't attracted to--but friends shouldn't think about their friends without their clothes on. Surely there was a rule about that. 

By the time Annabeth came out of the bathroom, Nico had almost managed to start relaxing again, telling himself it was no big deal, just him being a regular, hormonal teenager for once. Annabeth had exchanged her pajama top for a t-shirt and she went to collapse on her bed. Percy, though, remained standing at the bathroom door for some reason. 

"Nico," he said. "Your turn."

"What?" Nico said.

"Annabeth and me took care of each other, but someone has to look at your cuts too."

"I-"

Annabeth quickly glanced back and forth between Nico and Percy, and then Nico knew for sure that she'd caught his reaction earlier. Hopefully she wasn't thinking that Nico had lied about being over Percy in the hope of making a move on him under the cover of friendship. Although it was ridiculous to think that Percy could ever have eyes for someone other than Annabeth, and Annabeth must have known that.

"I can do it myself," he started to say, but Percy marched on him and dragged him into the bathroom before Nico could think of defending himself. 

"Dude, don't be stupid," Percy said. "It'll be easier to let someone else help."

He closed the bathroom door on them and Nico suddenly felt claustrophobic. It was a _very_ narrow bathroom, not really made to welcome more than one person at a time. Percy was still holding his wrist. 

"Hands off," Nico said through gritted teeth. "I don't like being touched."

Percy dropped his wrist like hot coal. "Okay, sorry, I'm sorry" he said.

He now looked so worried that he'd offended Nico that Nico made himself give him a reassuring smile.

"It's okay," he said. 

"Can I still--" Percy made a vague gesture in his direction. "It's just, I wouldn't want the cuts to get infected. They're just some stupid birds, and our quest hasn't even started."

Nico thought about asking for Annabeth to do it instead, but with Annabeth almost certainly understanding the reason for Nico's discomfort it would be just as mortifying, maybe even more. 

"Let's get this over with," he said.

"Okay, then take off your shirt."

"Right."

Nico took off his shirt, braced himself against the sink and let Percy examine him. He was so tense he felt like he was about to snap, uncomfortably aware of how close the scene looked to what he had imagined between Percy and Annabeth a moment earlier. This kind of situation was also taken straight from what had been one of his most private fantasies not so long ago. Even if he didn't like Percy that way anymore, it still was very eerie. He felt he must have been dreaming, because it didn't seem possible for reality to have such a sense of irony. 

"I'm putting an antiseptic cream on the cuts," Percy warned him. 

Nico mumbled a few words of assent. The cream felt cool against his skin, though not unpleasantly so. Percy worked quickly and matter-of-factly, but Nico could feel his warm breath against the back of his neck and it was distracting enough that the sting from his cuts barely registered anymore. Percy stood _so_ close; it was rare for anyone to stand this close to Nico and it made him feel jittery. 

"Almost done," Percy said. He smelled like the ocean.

" 'kay."

Nico's heart was pounding and the tips of his ears felt hot. He didn't dare look in the mirror to check if he was blushing. This was ridiculous, he thought to himself. He had to get it together, because he couldn't react that way any time another boy stood too close to him or saw him with his shirt off. It would make friendship awkward, and it wasn't as if Nico had too much going for himself in the first place. 

"I'm done," Percy said, but didn't take his hand off Nico's shoulder immediately. It lasted for two heartbeats--Nico counted--then Percy cleared his throat, stepped away and repeated, "I'm done, man. You can put your shirt back on."

Nico didn't run out of the bathroom, but it was a close call. Later, back in his bed and once they'd turned off the light, Nico re-examined his reaction. He told himself it was just that he was awkward around people, unused to physical contact, and still not completely comfortable with his attraction to boys. It wasn't about Percy in particular, because he was over Percy. The proof of that was that he could be around Percy without feeling like his heart was going to tear itself in half. Percy was just another guy that he was friends with, or at least they were trying to get there. 

Nico fell asleep and dreamed that the Stymphalian birds wanted to steal his eyes.

\--- 

They woke up the next morning at 5 am, ready to run away like thieves so they didn't have to explain what had happened to their room and pay for the damage. It was freezing inside the room because of the broken window and Percy got dressed in a hurry, shivering the whole time, while Annabeth was off in the bathroom. He glanced at Nico, who didn't seem very bothered by the temperature. Which made sense when you remembered that death was pretty much the absence of any warmth. 

They left a few bills in the room to try to cover at least in part for the broken window, and climbed back into Percy's mom's Prius with Jules-Albert behind the wheel. All of them were bleary-eyed and Percy fell asleep again with his cheek against the cold car window. He woke up when they entered Buck Creek, but it was still dark outside and the town was asleep, covered with a blanket of snow and silence.

"So, I know where my classmate's grandmother lives," Percy said, "but we won't be able to see much or to talk to her while it's still night."

"Let's just nap in the car," Nico said.

Percy had seen him in worse shapes, but it was clear that Nico had slept very little and that he was exhausted. Percy's thoughts drifted incongruously to earlier in the night when he'd taken care of Nico's cuts. Nico was thin, but when he'd seen him without his shirt Percy had been surprised to discover well-defined muscles, which was probably stupid since he must train at least as much as Percy did. It was maybe because part of Percy still thought of Nico as the skinny kid he'd met years ago, even though not much of that kid remained in current Nico. Percy felt a pang of sadness; he hadn't thought about cheerful, excitable Nico in a long time. 

"A nap sounds heavenly," Annabeth said, punctuating her words with a yawn. 

"Motion approved, then," Percy said. 

Nico sent back Jules-Albert, Percy snuggled against Annabeth, and they all went to sleep on the side of the road leading into Buck Creek. They woke up later in the morning when a woman knocked on the window on Annabeth's side. 

"What're you kids doing here on your own?" the woman asked once Annabeth had rolled down the window. "Is everything all right? Where are your parents?"

She was young, dark-skinned and short-haired, wearing matching gloves and scarf of a vibrant red color. A black SUV that must belong to her was parked in front of their car, its engine still rumbling. 

"Ah, uh," Percy said, trying to gather his thoughts. The empty driving seat must make it look like their driver had vanished into thin air. "Our mom is, um--" The three of them looked nothing like siblings, but Percy hoped the woman wouldn't think too deeply about it. "She was trying to get reception on her phone."

"If she needs to make a call, I can lend her my phone," the woman offered.

"No need," Annabeth said. "She'll be back in a minute. But thank you for offering."

The woman insisted a little, clearly worried at the idea of leaving them on the side of the road, but Annabeth was persuasive. Also, there was no way the woman could have guessed the truth: that their driver was a zombie who would only come back when Nico would call him from the Underworld, which he did as soon as the woman was gone. 

"Let's not stay here any longer," he said tensely. "We're only drawing attention to ourselves."

The grandmother of Percy's classmate, Joshua Clear, lived in a small white-paneled house with a triangular front porch, colonial-style. The house was surrounded with snow-covered fields, which made it look like some god had just dropped it there by accident. A pole with an American flag was planted next to the entrance and the flag floated lightly to the chilly wind. Percy knocked on the door, feeling uncertain. Despite their nap, it was still pretty early in the morning and Percy wasn't sure how to explain their presence without sounding creepy. 

"Let me handle this," Annabeth said, a hand in the crook of his elbow. 

A diminutive older woman opened the door. She had very white hair and her face was mapped with a network of fine wrinkles.

"Yes?" she asked, smiling inquisitively. 

With a confidence that was hard to counter, Annabeth introduced all three of them--even Nico--as classmates of Josh and got them into the house. Josh's grandmother, Mrs. Clear, made them hot chocolate with marshmallows while Annabeth explained that they were traveling through Indiana to visit family and had decided to make a stop here to talk with Mrs. Clear about her problem.

"I'm not sure I understand what you think you can do," Mrs. Clear said. She hadn't stopped smiling, but her smile had a perplexed tilt to it. "Not that I'm not happy to see some of Josh's friends."

"We've heard of similar things before," Percy said. "And we're good with--animals."

"What can it hurt to tell us where you've noticed the most damage?" Annabeth said, sounding so reasonable Percy almost nodded along in approval. "If we can't do anything, we'll just be on our way."

"Well, I suppose it can't hurt anything," Mrs. Clear said. "Let me just put on my coat."

They walked along the fields for a while before they reached one that was bordered by a stretch of woods. The field was a mess, scarred with deep gouges like someone had tried to dig haphazard trenches. Some of the trees at the border had broken branches, and a few of the smaller ones had even been uprooted. 

"It's not much of a problem during the winter," Mrs. Clear said. "But I just don't understand what could do this, and if this keeps on we'll lose any crops we'll try to plant."

"Don't worry, Mrs. Clear," Nico said quietly. "We'll take care of this."

He hadn't said a word since they'd entered Mrs. Clear's house, and the old woman looked at him in surprise. 

"You look very young, my boy," she said, which made Nico frown. "Are you sure this isn't too dangerous?"

"Has anyone ever been hurt by the dog?" Annabeth asked. 

Percy was admiring of the fact that she could say 'dog' with a straight face; no dog could have done the kind of damage they were seeing. It was possible that Mrs. Clear didn't see it the way they did, though. 

"No, but--"

"Then there probably isn't any danger."

Mrs. Clear looked again at the three of them, but she eventually nodded and said, "I guess I'll just leave you to it, then. Don't hesitate to come back and I'll make you lunch."

She walked away, her pace surprisingly sprightly for someone her age. Left alone, Percy, Annabeth and Nico looked at each other.

"What do you think could have done this?" Nico said, studying the grooves in the frozen ground. "It had to be huge."

"I don't know," Percy said. 

The more he looked at the damaged field, the more he felt that he _should_ know what had done this. A feeling nagged at the edge of his mind, some sense of familiarity, the way you would recognize the sound of someone's footsteps. 

"Let's maybe walk along the woods," Annabeth suggested. She tugged at her scarf, arranging it so it fit her neck more snuggly. Her nose was red from the cold and Percy wanted to kiss it. "With the two of you here, it's only a matter of time until the monster is drawn out by your scent."

"So is it the only thing I'm good for, acting as a bait?" Percy said with mock indignation, although he'd started walking in the direction Annabeth had indicated. 

Annabeth stuck out her tongue at him. "I wouldn't say that's the _only_ thing, Seaweed Brain. You're also mildly entertaining."

"That's something, I guess."

"And not awful to look at."

"Hey, guys," Nico interrupted them. He was pointing at the trees. "See that?"

"I don't-" 

Percy squinted and saw that some of the trees in the distance seemed to be shaking. None of them talked for a moment as they held their breaths and listened: crashing sounds were coming from the woods, disturbing the still cold air. Percy uncapped Riptide and held the bronze sword ready. 

"Here it comes," he said.

The curtain of trees that bordered the field trembled and Percy tensed in anticipation, but he was _not_ prepared for what came out. It wasn't the most terrifying monster he'd ever faced, or the ugliest. It was rather beautiful, in fact: a bull about half as high as Mrs. Clear's house, it had horns that looked made out of bronze and a coat of the purest white. But when it charged through the trees and came into view, Percy was hit in the face with a wave of rage. The rage was reflected in the bull's mad red eyes, as if Percy had a direct connection to the beast's mind, and for a moment Percy couldn't move, rooted to the spot, even as the bull was charging right at him.

"Percy? What's wrong? Percy, _move!_ "

Annabeth pulled Percy to the side just in time to avoid him getting skewered by the bull's sharp-looking horns. The bull's momentum carried it for a couple more yards before the beast ground to a halt, sending dirt and snow flying. It turned around, blowing smoke out of its nostrils. 

"Hey, come and get me!" yelled Nico, who had moved away from Percy and Annabeth.

"Percy!" Annabeth urgently shook Percy's shoulders. "Are you all right? Can you hear me?"

"Ye-yeah," Percy said. "I'm just--"

"Listen to me: I think this is the Cretan bull."

The name sounded familiar, but Percy felt like his brain had turned into mush and every single of his thoughts had to plow through it to connect to each other. From the corner of his eye he saw the bull attack Nico, but Nico was quick and soon he was driving the beast mad, dancing around it with his midnight-black sword. _We need to help him,_ Percy thought, but the bull's aura of rage was still keeping him in place. 

"Percy, focus!" Annabeth ordered. Percy was helpless against that tone of hers and he tried his best to do what she said. "The Cretan bull is the Minotaur's father. It was created by Poseidon, by _your_ father, and it received his rage, too. I think this is why it's affecting you. Here's what we're going to do: I'm going into the woods, and when you hear me whistle, you draw the bull toward me. All right?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. I'm going, then. Go help Nico. Wait for my signal."

She went off running into the woods, and Percy tried to shake himself out his stupor. Nico needed him. Annabeth had a plan. He gritted his teeth, channeling the bull's rage through himself and letting it out in a war cry: "Rhaaaaaaaahhh!!!"

He ran at the beast, holding his sword in front of him. The bull had been distracted by Nico, but it still turned its head when it heard Percy coming. Percy's Riptide met one of the bull's horns in a clash that made sparks fly. The bull pushed forward, stronger than Percy could ever hope to be, so when Percy felt that his strength was going to fail him he suddenly dropped to his knees, getting under the bull's head, and then stabbed the creature into the leg. 

The wound enraged the Cretan Bull even further. It shook its head and kicked, but Percy used his powers to send snow flying into its eyes, trying to blind it. Then, taking advantage of the beast's confusion, he managed to roll out of its reach and spring back up to his feet. It had also given Nico time to attack the bull again from its other side, so that it was bleeding from both legs and seemed not to know which one of his assailants he wanted to shish-kebab most badly. This was the moment when Percy heard the clear sound of Annabeth's whistle.

"I'm drawing it into the woods!" Percy shouted to Nico. "Annabeth has a trap ready!"

"Wha-okay!"

Percy thought about yelling something witty at the bull to get its attention, but it turned out that as soon as Percy moved away from it the beast laser-focused on him and started galloping, so it probably would have been a waste of good witticism. The bull ran _really_ fast and seemed very intent on getting Percy. _Maybe I shouldn't have been so lax in my training for the past few months_ , Percy thought as he ran toward the trees, his lungs burning from the effort. He plunged into the woods, hearing the bull crashing through the trees behind him, although it seemed to barely slow it down. He heard Annabeth whistle again and followed the sound. Branches slapped his face, brambles caught his clothes, but Percy kept running because the end of a horn _wasn't_ where he wanted to finish his life. _Thanks a bunch, Dad, by the way!_

Percy dashed between two trees, and there, behind the one on his right, he caught a glimpse of Annabeth's blond hair and he slowed down. The bull arrived a few mere seconds after him but was caught at throat-level by a thread that ran between the trees higher than Percy's head. 

"I kept some of Arachne's thread," Annabeth explained. "I'm going to try to tie the bull with it!"

Nico emerged from behind the trees and Annabeth threw him a ball of Arachne's thread as soon as he was close enough. Fortunately, Nico quickly caught on what she meant to do and started running around the bull's legs. Percy figured he should leave it to them, and decided to distract the bull so it wouldn't attack Annabeth and Nico or realize what they were doing and try to escape. 

"Hey there!" he called to the Cretan bull. "Are you mad, is that it? Anger issues you need to work on? Poseidon says hi, by the way!"

The bull's breathing sounded like rumbling thunder and more smoke escaped its nostrils. It pushed against the thread, which left bloody lines that crisscrossed its massive white neck, and tried to catch Percy with his horns. Percy could see Nico and Annabeth running between the bull's legs and the thought that the beast might accidentally trample them terrified him, but he kept going. 

"Does that mean we're brothers? I don't remember exactly if Poseidon fathered you or if he created you, but anyway my family tree is complicated enough and I don't need another brother. I don't think you like me very much, too. Feeling's mutual, by the way. I don't like things that try to spike me."

It was going pretty well, until Percy made the mistake of meeting the bull's eyes again. Instantly he was pulled back into the beast's rage and insanity and stopped being aware of anything else. The bull's horns were flying right in front of his face, and part of him was aware of the danger but he couldn't move, paralyzed from head to toe. He thought he could vaguely hear someone-several someones?-yell his name but it sounded all very far away. Then he felt arms wrap themselves around him and everything melted into darkness. 

A heartbeat later, he was lying on his back on cold forest ground and Nico's face was right over his. For a moment, neither of them moved and they just watched each other. Percy was acutely aware of Nico's weight on him; not that Nico was very heavy, but everything was cold and Nico was the only source of warmth. Percy had never noticed that Nico actually had a few very faint freckles, invisible from a distance, dusted over his nose as they had been on Bianca's. Nico inched closer and for a mad moment, Percy thought, _'Is he going to kiss me?_ ' He felt blood rush to his face, but then Nico pitched forward and crumpled on Percy, his face buried against Percy's shoulder. 

"Nico?" Percy tentatively touched Nico's shoulder. "Are you okay?"

"Need a moment," Nico mumbled, his voice muffled by Percy's coat.

Percy started pushing himself into a sitting position, gently helping Nico do the same. Nico shook his head dazedly, as if trying to clear cobwebs off his brain, then looked at his hands and examined them.

"I'm fine," he said, looking relieved.

"Percy? Nico?" Annabeth called from a little distance. "Where are you?"

"We're here!" Percy answered. "We're coming."

Nico wasn't as fine as he claimed to be, because Percy had to help him back on his feet. They hadn't gone very far from Annabeth and got to her again quickly enough. Which made Percy worry, because was it normal that such a short jump had affected Nico so much? Nico had hinted at the fact that his powers hadn't fully recovered from this summer's ordeal, but he'd implied that his control of shadow-travel was the problem, rather than it being a danger to him. Typical Nico misdirection, trying to distract them from the real issue. 

They found Annabeth standing next to a hogtied bull, which seemed to have exhausted itself fighting against its binds.

"Are you okay?" she asked, her eyes doing a quick job of examining both Percy and Nico.

"I'm fine," Percy said. "Nico shadow-travelled me out of the way."

"I'm fine too," Nico said. "What do we do? Maybe two of us could hold onto its horns so the other can slit its throat."

This was what they did, even though it made Percy a little sick to slay a creature that way. Killing in the heat of battle was a whole different thing from cold-blooded execution. Nevertheless, Percy asked to be the one to do it, figuring he sort of owed it to the bull that had been created and made forever angry by his father. 

"Sorry about that," he told the beast, avoiding its mad eyes so he wouldn't get pulled again, before he raised Riptide. 

"Well, our job here is done," Annabeth said once the beast had dissolved into yellow dust. 

"Yeah," Percy said. "Oh, and Nico--thanks, man, by the way."

"Don't mention it," Nico said, looking embarrassed and still a little too pale. 

Percy almost patted his shoulder but held himself back. Nico had said he didn't enjoy being touched, and--Percy's mind flashed to the memory of himself and Nico on the forest ground, Nico draped over him and his face way too close. It had felt… Percy was honestly too exhausted to make sense of it. 

"Let's get back to Mrs. Clear," he said. "Hopefully she'll have more hot chocolate for us, because I'm totally freezing."

\---

Mrs. Clear insisted on having them for lunch as she'd promised to do, even though, strangely enough, she didn't ask a lot of questions about what the 'dog' had looked like or how they'd handled the problem. Maybe it was the Mist at work, or maybe the old woman could feel instinctively that she shouldn't try to know too much about what had happened. She fed them mashed potatoes and roasted chicken, as well as a steaming apple pie for dessert, and the meal was a pleasant interlude after the fight against the Cretan bull. Mrs. Clear asked them a lot of questions about school, maybe to compensate for all the questions she _wasn't_ asking, and Annabeth and Percy handled most of the conversation. Nico was silent and pale, which worried Annabeth. She'd noticed already that he'd seemed to avoid using his powers before, except to summon Jules-Albert; this summer must have messed him up more badly than Annabeth and Percy had ever known. 

Percy was a little off, too, although Annabeth only saw it because she knew him so well. He was chatting amicably with Mrs. Clear but there was a strain to his smiles. His encounter with the Cretan bull must have disturbed him more than he'd let on, and Percy wasn't so easily disturbed after everything he'd been through. Annabeth vowed to herself that she would talk to him about it later. 

They left with some apple pie slices in a doggy bag that Mrs. Clear insisted on giving them. They'd parked far enough from Mrs. Clear's house that there was no chance she would witness the strange spectacle of Nico summoning Jules-Albert from the Underworld.

"Are you sure you should be doing this?" Percy asked, frowning; he must have noticed too how drained Nico looked.

Nico made a small irritated sound. "I'm fine, and you two can stop looking at me like I'm going to break. Summoning Jules-Albert is nothing for me, because he's a gift from my father. It's as straining as putting on shoes."

The zombie had impassively climbed in the driver's seat and they all followed him into the car. As Jules-Albert drove them away, Annabeth leaned between the front seats.

"Tell us honestly," she said to Nico. "How bad did it get this summer when you were shadow-travelling my mother's statue?"

Nico let out a put-upon sigh. "Pretty bad," he said finally. "If Coach Hedge hadn't managed to get us those pegasi for the last leg of our journey, I wouldn't have made it."

Annabeth saw the shock of Nico's words reflect on Percy's face. "You mean--" Percy started. 

"That I would have died, yes, Percy," Nico said bluntly. "Or rather, I would have turned into a shadow myself, incapable of maintaining my body, which--"

Nico didn't finish his sentence, but Annabeth thought she could imagine what he wanted to say. Death was familiar to Nico, a constant companion and his father's legacy; turning into a shadow, on the other hand, must have been an utterly terrifying perspective.

"It was all worth it, though," Nico said forcefully, as if daring them to disagree. "It would have been worth it whatever happened."

Annabeth agreed with the sentiment, but she didn't want to sound like she didn't care about what could have happened to Nico. She did care, but she knew all too well what it would have meant for him to fail because it had haunted her for so long: their camp wiped out, Annabeth's mother lost to insanity, Gaia winning and destroying the world as they knew it. 

Percy still looked troubled. "And how bad is it now?" he asked. 

"I'm fine. I'm a lot better. Using my powers strains me more than it used to, but I should be back to normal very soon."

Percy didn't look convinced but didn't try to push for more information. They spent the rest of the afternoon in the car, playing games and making small talk that didn't put anyone on the spot. When night started to fall, Percy insisted on stopping at a motel even though Nico argued that they could make it to Camp Half-Blood during the night if they pushed through. 

"If we stop again, we run the risk of having more monster problems like we had last night," Nico said. 

"Spending this much time in the car is exhausting," Percy said. 

"Jules-Albert isn't going to get tired," Nico said. "You two can sleep in the car, and I'll be fine."

"Well, _I_ 'm tired of being in the car," Percy said. 

"I'm tired too," Annabeth said, and Percy gratified her with a small smile for her support. 

Nico finally relented and they stopped at a small, isolated motel, the kind that looked to be either haunted or a serial killer's lair--or so Percy claimed when they parked in front of it. The clerk at the desk was a girl their age, with long straight black hair and a pale, bony face. She kept casting them surreptitious glances from under her fringe, as if she feared being caught looking at them openly but couldn't help herself. 

"You're room 13," she said quietly, handing Annabeth their key.

"Number 13? Now that's unlucky," Percy joked, but he faltered when the girl scowled. "Um, I mean, thank you."

There was something familiar about that girl, Annabeth thought. Not like they'd met before, but like she reminded Annabeth of someone. It was only when she saw Nico yawn that Annabeth realized that it was him that the girl made Annabeth think of: there was something guarded but defiant about her that was definitely Nico-like. 

Annabeth and Percy let Nico have the first shower, and while he was the bathroom they lied down on their bed, arms around each other, enjoying the relative intimacy for the first time in two days. 

"So, are you okay?" Annabeth asked Percy.

He kissed her nose. "Of course. Why wouldn't I be?"

"You looked a little off, earlier. I thought it was maybe because of what happened with the Cretan bull."

"Oh." He seemed to be thinking. "It wasn't fun, that's for sure, but no, I'm fine. It's a rather sad fact of our lives that it isn't close to the worst thing to have happened to me. Or to you, for that matter."

Annabeth laughed a little ruefully, brushing a thumb against the apple of his cheek. "All right, I see your point. You know you can always tell me if something's wrong, right? Even if it's not the worst to have happened to you."

"Yes, I know, Wise Girl."

He gave another kiss to her nose, and then one to her mouth. Annabeth exhaled contentedly, feeling the tension from their day completely melt away. Here, in Percy's arms, she felt the most relaxed she ever was. She moved her hand to cup the back of his neck, curling her fingers to play with his hair. Their kiss grew heavier and hotter, Percy's hand roaming along Annabeth's side and the curve of her hip. They pressed closer, their legs tangling, and Annabeth could feel him hardening against her stomach.

"Hey there," she said with a soft chuckle, leaning her forehead against his.

"Don't make fun," he said, smiling crookedly. "I'm seventeen."

"Oh, I know, and I'm not complaining, but Nico's right there in the other room and he might come out any second."

Percy went rigid in her arms. At the same moment, the sound of running water that had come from the bathroom stopped. Percy rolled on his back, his arms letting go of Annabeth. 

"You're right," he said. "We shouldn't."

Annabeth moved on her back too, disconcerted at how fast and neatly the mood had broken. She'd only meant to warn Percy that he shouldn't get too heavily into it, not to make him pull away so completely. Yes, it would be awkward if Nico caught them making out, but--Annabeth glanced at Percy, who was vaguely frowning at the ceiling, his fingers laced over his chest. She almost asked again if everything was all right, but chances were that she would get the same answer than before and she no longer knew if she could trust it to be genuine. 

Nico came out of the bathroom, drying his hair with a towel. He was wearing a t-shirt that was black but didn't have any skull; instead there was some sort of logo and the word 'RAMONES' on it. He looked refreshed, less like he was staying awake only through sheer force of will.

"Bathroom is free," he said, then looked at them, lifting an eyebrow. "I could guess that you were making out while I was showering, you know. You don't need to pretend you weren't by lying so far apart."

Percy flushed and then shoved his legs off the bed, rushing to the bathroom. "Hope you don't mind if I'm taking the next shower," he said quickly. 

The bathroom door slammed behind him and Nico looked at Annabeth with a puzzled expression.

"Is it something I said?" he asked. 

Annabeth pushed herself up and looped her arms around her knees. "I don't know," she said with a shrug. "I think something is bothering him but he won't tell me what it is. Maybe he doesn't know himself."

Once all of them had had their turn in the bathroom, they ate the pie Mrs. Clear had given them. Percy acted normal after his shower, revivified as he always got from water, and Annabeth ended up thinking that she'd read too much into his reaction. They went to bed early and had a blessedly monster-free night.

The next morning, the same girl was at the desk when they checked out and Annabeth found herself trying to chat with her. Unfortunately, the girl was rather impermeable to her efforts. 

"Do you have a lot of customers out there?" Annabeth asked.

"No," the girl said, looking down at her hands and examining her cuticles.

"Doesn't it get boring for you?"

"No."

"Have you been working here for long?"

The girl looked up then, her eyes grey and dull as slate. "A while," she said, and there was something harsh about her tone that confused Annabeth.

"Have a good day," Annabeth said, plastering a quick smile on her face.

"What was that about?" Percy asked her under his breath as they left.

"I don't know, this girl is--" She couldn't say that the girl made her think of Nico, not with Nico right there. Also, she wasn't sure it was the only thing troubling her. "I don't know, I just had a feeling."

They went back to the car and soon, the motel was only a speck in the rearview mirror.


	2. Chapter 2

Percy's Christmas was a quiet affair with only his mother and Paul. He didn't mind it, especially when he thought of past Christmases when his mother was still married to Smelly Gabe. Ah, good old Smelly Gabe, whom Percy didn't miss in the slightest. _Those_ Christmases weren't quiet at all, because Gabe usually drank too much, yelled at Percy and his mom the whole time, and Percy always ended up barricading himself in his room. Paul went a little overboard with the Christmas decorations, but it was pretty much his only flaw. They drank apple cider, ate ham and mashed potatoes and an unholy amount of sugar cookies, and spent the whole Christmas day watching Christmas movies together. 

Annabeth was on the West Coast celebrating the holidays with her father and his family, and Percy missed her a lot, he did, but at the same time he was grateful for the distance. He was struggling with something, and he wanted to have it sorted out before he saw her again. The problem was that he wasn't very good at figuring that kind of shit on his own, but didn't know who to talk to. Usually he would go to Annabeth with any issue he had, but he didn't want her to even know about this. His mom and Paul were always ready to listen to him, but this wasn't something he felt comfortable discussing with his parents. Grover was busy all the time these days--saving nature was a full-time job--and most of his other friends were away. Tyson was back to the Underwater Forges of the Cyclops--he wasn't necessarily someone Percy would go for advice about the sort of problem he was having, but he missed his Cyclop brother and Tyson could be surprisingly insightful. 

It didn't help that he wasn't sleeping well. He wasn't a stranger to weird dreams; demigods were susceptible to clairvoyant dreams and Percy had had more than his share over the years. He also had a lot of normal nightmares, about things that had happened to him, or things he feared would happen to him or his loved ones. Tartarus, unsurprisingly, was a regular customer: whenever Percy had had a stressful day, or if something during the day had reminded him of it, even something trivial, then his memories of Tartarus invited themselves to his dreams. But since he'd come back from Indiana Percy had woken up every night from nightmares, and he was getting fed up with it. 

Then, a few days after Christmas, Jason was here for a visit. He and Piper had come for a little holiday trip at Camp Half-Blood, and while Piper was spending time with those of her siblings who were currently at camp, Jason went to see Percy. They played video games the whole afternoon and Percy thoroughly kicked Jason's ass. He had an unfair advantage, of course, because Jason hadn't had a lot of opportunities to play video games throughout his childhood at Camp Jupiter, but it didn't stop Percy from enjoying his victories because video games were pretty much the only field where he was sure he had the upper hand over Jason. Hey, they were friends, but a little healthy competition had never hurt anyone.

"Let's take a break, man," he said after Jason had dropped his controller in disgust. "Want anything to drink?"

"Sure. I'd like a Coke, please."

Percy went to the kitchen to get himself and Jason drinks. There he found his mother, pulling a batch of freshly baked cookies out of the oven.

"Here, take some of those," she told Percy, shoving a plate full of cookies into his hands. "I can't seem to be able to stop myself from baking. It's a curse."

"Oh, no, more cookies, what a hardship," Percy deadpanned. 

His mother laughed, then gave him a careful considering look. She must have known that something wasn't all right with Percy, because she was perceptive that way. He smiled, trying to reassure her. 

"Are you having fun with your friend?" she asked.

"Yeah. He sucks at video games, this is a lot of fun."

"Oh, god, here are more cookies for that poor kid. Don't eat them on the way!"

Percy swore he would never, and then snagged two cookies from the plate as he went back to his room. He gave Jason his soda can and sat down on the floor next to him, putting the plate of cookies between them. They drank and ate in silence for a moment while Percy tried to work up the nerve to talk to Jason about his problem. 

"So, um," he finally said. "Can I talk to you about something?"

"Of course, man." Jason put his can down on the floor. "I was wondering if you were fine, actually. You look tired."

Percy rubbed his eyes. "Yeah, just haven't been sleeping well lately. But this wasn't what I wanted to talk about." At least he didn't think the two problems were related--so far none of his dreams had been about _that_. "I don't know if you know, but about a week ago I went on a quest with Annabeth and Nico."

"Yeah, I know. The Cretan bull, right? I saw Nico at camp and he told me about it."

"Ah." That simple mention of Nico kind of took the wind out of Percy's sails, and he almost didn't go on. "You know that Nico confessed to me that--"

"Yeah, I know about that too. Nico told me."

Well, weren't Nico and Jason great pals, Percy thought with a flare of some emotion he couldn't identify. Irritation, maybe. Why was it so easy for Nico to talk with Jason when he still acted so guarded around Percy?

Jason narrowed his eyes. "You don't have a problem with it, do you?" he asked. "With Nico being gay and the fact that he used to be into you."

"What? No! Dude, come on, you know me better than that. I asked Nico to come with Annabeth and me because I wanted us be friends. Again. If we've ever been friends." Percy sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Everything between me and Nico has been complicated since the day we met."

"Okay, I'm sorry," Jason said soothingly. "I know you're not that kind of guy, but I just--I don't know, I feel protective of Nico. So, what's your problem?"

"Um." Now that Jason had acted like he didn't trust Percy to not be a homophobic asshole, it was going to be hard for him not to overreact to what Percy had to confess. "You have to promise me not to yell at me, or to laugh, or--Just listen, okay?"

"Okay."

"And you can't tell anyone about it! Not Piper, and not--not Nico." _Especially not Nico._

"I promise. I'm not going to start spilling your secrets to everyone I know. Talk to me, Percy. I'm started to get worried, here."

"Yeah, okay." Percy took a deep breath. "Okay, so. When we were fighting the Cretan bull, it was like I had a connection to it, maybe because my father created it. Nico told you about that?"

"Yeah," Jason said, his tone careful. "Is it what--"

"No, no, this isn't related to my--problem. I'm just explaining the circumstances. So, during the fight, I was trying to distract the bull while Annabeth and Nico tied his legs with Arachne's thread, but then I met his eyes and I completely froze. I couldn't move at all, and the bull would have skewered me if Nico hadn't shadow-travelled me away."

"Nico didn't say anything about that."

Percy snorted. "Typical. When we popped out of the shadows, I was on my back and Nico was on top of me-" He swallowed, the vivid memory playing again in his mind: Nico's body against his, thin and bony but not fragile at all, his sharp dark eyes that looked like broken glass boring into Percy's. "And I--for a moment I wondered if he was going to kiss me. I know, I know, Nico's over me and he's not going to just jump any boy. I wasn't afraid or disgusted, if that's what you're thinking. That's not the problem."

"Then what _is_ the problem?"

"I wasn't _afraid_. Just the contrary, actually. After it happened I kept thinking about it and then I finally figured it out. It wasn't Nico, it was me. _I_ wanted to kiss _him_."

Jason wasn't saying anything, and Percy didn't dare look in his direction to check his reaction. Instead he stared at a hole in his sock and thought that now would be a good time for the ground to start cracking, as it did under the effect of Nico's powers, and send him straight to the Underworld. 

"Jason?" he said after they'd sat in pregnant silence for a moment. "Dude, put me out of my misery and say something."

"Sorry, I was just trying to--take it all in. So, you wanted to kiss Nico?"

"Yeah."

"Do you think it could be just--I don't know, curiosity? Because he told you he used to crush on you, so now you're wondering what it would be like to kiss another guy?"

Percy had thought about that already. "I don't think so. It wasn't just an idle thought, like, ' _Hey, I wonder what it'd feel like to make out with a dude!'_ It was definitely, uhh, _aimed_ at Nico. Like, I was super aware of him, and--you know what I mean."

Jason's eyes widened. "Tell me you didn't get a boner."

"No! Nico would have definitely noticed that, wouldn't he? And then he probably would have punched me. But if it had gone on for longer, I don't know--" Percy trailed off, feeling himself get red in the face. 

"That bad, huh." To Percy's relief, Jason acted rather chill about the whole matter. If anything, he seemed thoughtful. "And this just happened all of a sudden? You never had that kind of--feelings for him before?"

Percy had also spent a lot of time thinking about _that_. "I don't know. Like I said, it was always very complicated between us. When we met, he was really just a little kid. I know the age difference is still the same now, but it felt like more back then. He was very different, too. You wouldn't have recognized him. And then his sister Bianca died, and he ran away, and I spent a lot of time looking for him and worrying about him because I felt responsible for him."

"Makes sense."

"Then there was the time he tricked me into his father's palace and I ended up in a jail. I know Nico didn't mean for it to happen and that he was genuine about helping me, but it still sucked. I'd trusted him and he'd betrayed that trust. After that, I got together with Annabeth--which was, you know, _awesome_ \--and I lost my memories, and the next time I saw Nico he pretended he didn't know me! But I could feel I knew him. Again, I know why he did it, but--When I got my memories back it was hard to process everything, to think about how he'd lied to me again even if it was for good reasons, especially since at the same time he was dying, trapped in that awful jar. And then, you know, Tartarus and everything. When I was in Tartarus, knowing that Nico had been there too, and meeting Bob, I thought a lot about Nico and whether I'd treated him right. That's why I wanted us to try to bond or something. So, you see, there was always so much going on that I really can't tell how I was feeling about Nico this whole time."

Percy stopped talking, realizing suddenly how much he'd just rambled. He glanced at Jason and saw his friend blinking at him. 

"You seem to have quite a lot of feelings about Nico," Jason said slowly. 

"You think?" Percy said anxiously.

"I'm not an expert on that sort of things. Piper would be the one to talk to."

"We're _not_ telling Piper!"

"Okay, okay," Jason said, raising his hands in a gesture of appeasement. "My totally non-expert assessment is: maybe there was a seed of--something before, and Nico's confession opened your mind to the possibility. But the real question is, what're you going to do?"

"I'm not going to _do_ anything. I just needed to talk to someone. There's nothing to do, really, because I love Annabeth and I don't want to break up with her. That much I know. Besides, Nico doesn't feel that way about me anymore."

Percy couldn't believe himself, but it actually hurt a little to think about Nico being over him. It shouldn't, because it made things clear-cut: Nico didn't like him anymore, Percy had Annabeth, so there was no _possibility_ there. And yet, Percy couldn't help feeling weirdly bitter about Nico moving on. Somewhere, he thought that Piper's mom must have been laughing at him. 

"What about guys in general?" Jason asked. "I mean, have you had that sort of feelings for other dudes before?"

Percy shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. Not that I recall, no." He grimaced at Jason. "I don't want to kiss _you_ , if that's what you're asking."

"Oh, please," Jason said, giving him a shove. "Have you seen Nico since your trip to Indiana?" 

"No, I haven't. It might be for the best, because I don't want this to grow out of proportions and ruin things with Annabeth."

"Well, be careful, bro," Jason said. "Nico doesn't trust people easily, and he doesn't have a lot of friends. If you go to him with offers of friendship and then blow him off once the quest is over, how do you think it's going to look from his point of view?"

Nico might think that Percy had merely needed him for the quest--Percy was already pretty sure that he'd assumed something along those lines when Percy had asked him to join. Everything was confusing right now, but at least Percy knew that the last thing he wanted to do was to hurt Nico.

"Yeah, you're right. I'll go over to camp in a few days, before I have to get back to school. Will you and Piper still be there? I want to see Piper, too."

"Yeah, I think we'll stay for a few days."

"I can't let things get awkward with Nico. Who knows, maybe this was a fluke and it'll fade soon enough. It could have been merely adrenaline, or the fact that he'd just saved my ass--all those stories about the damsel-in-distress hooking up with their savior exist for a reason. Anyway, thanks for listening to me, man."

"Anytime," Jason said with a smile.

They bumped fists, and Percy let Jason have the last cookie as a show of gratitude. Then he picked up his controller and said, "How many times do you think I can kill you before my mom calls us for dinner?"

"Oh, man, you're _on_."

\---

Nico's Christmas was the best of his life, or at least the best he could remember. His recollection of his childhood with his mother was spotty at best, and the memories often felt like they'd happened to someone else. His last Christmas with Bianca had taken place in an impersonal hotel room, where his sister had done what she could to make him forget how isolated, lost and confused they were; as for the past few years, they were better not dwelled on. 

But this year, Nico had gone to visit Hazel at Camp Jupiter and it made all the difference. The camp didn't really celebrate Christmas, as it wasn't a Roman celebration, but it didn't stop most legionnaires from decorating their barracks, with more or less exuberance depending on their centurion's tolerance. The Fifth Cohort's barracks was the most dazzling of them all. 

Hazel had welcomed her brother with literal open arms. Her job as a centurion kept her so busy that she and Nico hadn't had many occasions to see each other in the past few months, but it never stopped warming Nico's heart to see how delighted his sister was when he visited. When he'd helped her out of the Underworld and as they got to know each other, Nico had more or less perceived her as replacement for the sister he'd lost. He was ashamed of it now, but losing all hope of ever seeing Bianca again, even in death, had hit him hard and he'd clung onto Hazel as his only living family. It was different now--Hazel and he had formed a real bond, and it wasn't at all like the one he'd had with Bianca. They'd fought by each other's sides and they were on equal terms, even if Hazel called him her big brother. 

Christmas was also the occasion to see Reyna and Frank, and all four of them celebrated Christmas day together in Reyna and Frank's praetor quarters. Frank had settled into his new role, more confident than ever, and Reyna seemed more relaxed now that she had someone else to share the weight of praetor's duties with. 

"So, how are things at Camp Half-Blood?" Reyna asked as they were sitting around a table bearing what was left of their meal. Reyna's hair was loose and her face had nothing of her usual severe praetor air. Nico liked seeing her like this. 

They'd talked mostly about Camp Jupiter and all the work that had been done in the Legion to repair the mess Octavian had created. It had seemed peaceful enough to Nico when he'd walked around camp, but he knew it hadn't been easy to restore order after Octavian's crazy leadership had divided everyone. And there was nothing Romans hated more than a lack of order. 

"Oh, you know," Nico said, shrugging. He felt warm and content, and the feeling was so unusual that he wished he knew how to preserve it in a bottle and carry it around. "Camp Half-Blood is pretty quiet outside of summer. It isn't like here. But I went on a quest, recently--with Percy and Annabeth."

"Oh, really?" Reyna said.

Her face and tone betrayed nothing, but she knew all about how he used to feel about Percy, even though they'd never discussed it. When they'd carried the Athena Parthenos in a desperate rush to get it to Camp Half-Blood, Reyna and Nico had gone through a lot together and she'd accidentally seen into his heart in a way no one else ever had. Hazel only knew that Nico liked boys--he'd felt compelled to share that part of himself with her, and it had been a relief when she hadn't treated him any less lovingly once she'd known, despite having been born like him in another time. 

"Really," Nico said, and he told them about their fight with the Cretan Bull. 

"Gaia's monsters are still out there," Reyna said. "Even though we've beaten her, we mustn't relax our vigilance." 

"Monsters have pretty much always been out there," Frank said. "I don't mean we should take it easy, but we don't have to exist in a perpetual state of war."

"We're a Roman Legion," Reyna pointed out, but she seemed to be containing a smile. "Also, your father is Mars, god of war."

Frank blushed slightly. "Well, you know what I mean."

Hazel laughed and took his hand. "I think Frank means that we shouldn't let it keep us from enjoying ourselves from time to time."

"Yes," Frank said, nodding vigorously. "That's what I mean."

"I, for one," Hazel said, "is grateful for the opportunity of living through a new Christmas, and that I got to celebrate it with all of you." 

Reyna smiled her quiet, content smile, nodding her agreement with Hazel's words, and Frank wrapped an arm around his girlfriend's shoulders and hugged her to his side. Later, Nico and Hazel went out for a walk around the camp under the starry sky. Winter in California was nowhere near as cold as it could get in New York, but the night was still a little too chilly for people who weren't children of the Underworld. 

"Are you really happy there?" Hazel asked suddenly after they'd walked in companionable silence for a moment. 

"In Camp Half-Blood, you mean? Yeah, it's--better. I don't feel anymore like I don't fit there."

"I'm glad. I do feel like people in the Legion are more accepting of me being a child of Pluto. And I feel--like I don't mind it as much anymore. What we are." Her golden eyes gleamed under the moonlight when she turned her face to him. "I sometimes wish that you would come live here, but as long as you're happy it's all that matters."

Nico kissed her cheek. "I'm glad to see you happy too."

Their walk had been aimless, but Nico wasn't surprised when it led them to Temple Hill and they ended up in front of the black crypt of their father's shrine that was built into the side of the hill. They entered it; the inside was cool and dark, and at the end of the room stood a bronze statue of Pluto, fully robed and holding an overflowing cornucopia, with a small altar next to it. Hazel walked to the statue and raised her head, as if she was trying to look her father in the eye despite the fact that the higher part of the statue was shrouded in shadows.

"Father," she said. "Getting to know my brother has been a blessing, so thank you for that. I hope to have many more years with him."

Nico joined her and nudged her shoulder. "You're very emotional, tonight. Is something the matter?"

"I don't know, I just--" She shook her head and leaned against him. "I had a dream about you."

"A dream?" That sounded foreboding; dreams were rarely just _dreams_ for demigods. "What was it about?"

"I saw you in the--in the jar. Maybe it doesn't mean anything. I could have imagined it from what Percy told us about his dream when you were a prisoner."

"Percy dreamed about me being in the jar?"

"Yes, he did. He never told you? Well, I guess it didn't matter much after we'd freed you. I don't know why this dream upset me so much. It can't happen to you again. It _can't_ ," she repeated ferociously, as if determined to make it true. 

"It won't," Nico assured her, but he had to contain a shudder when the memories of his time in the jar brushed his mind.

"I'm happy that you and Percy seem to get along," she said.

The change of topic took Nico by surprise and the mention of Percy made him tense. He'd done his best to avoid thinking about Percy too much, but he didn't want to get into why with Hazel--or with anyone, for that matter.

"Why do you say that?" he asked, trying to sound as casual as one could be when standing in the dark shrine of the Lord of the Underworld.

"Percy's good guy," Hazel said. "A good friend to have. And you two--" She laughed. "You know that the first time I saw you together, I was afraid I'd started a nuclear war by introducing the two of you? It was like being stuck between two blazing fires. Of course I didn't know you already knew each other, then."

"Hmm, yeah. Percy wasn't very happy with me for that."

"With Percy at your side, nothing will be able to touch you. I believe that."

 _With Percy at your side_. She'd meant as a friend, of course, but Nico couldn't help the feelings that stirred in him at her words, old feelings that he'd thought faded and forgotten. A sense of despair washed over him--would he _ever_ be free? He didn't want to go back to the agony of being in unrequited love with Percy.

"Nico?" He felt Hazel touch his hand. "Is something wrong?"

"No," Nico said, giving her hand a quick squeeze. " _I_ won't let anything touch me."

"Is that a promise, big brother?"

"It is. I promise you: I won't let myself be hurt by anything."

A draft of cold air ran through the shrine, and Nico hoped he hadn't just jinxed himself with those words. 

\---

Christmas had never been Annabeth's favorite period of the year, but she had to acknowledge that this year's celebration was very enjoyable. On Christmas day, as she was eating the Christmas porridge with cranberry sauce, apple and pecans that she and her stepmother were the only ones to truly enjoy, listening to the twins bicker while her father was reading an article, forgetting all about his food, Annabeth was struck by the realization that she truly felt at home here. Matthew and Bobby, no matter how much she'd denied it when she was younger, were just as much her brothers as her siblings at Camp Half-Blood. This house was a place where she knew she would always be welcome and accepted. 

Nevertheless, she was glad to go back to New York and be with Percy again. And she was glad to be at school again, which Percy thought was pure craziness on her part. Both of them had to pass the SAT and the DSTOMP, an exam for Roman demigods, to secure their admission at New Rome University, but what was a thrilling challenge to Annabeth was a chore to Percy, who hated studying. So even if it had started as _his_ project, Annabeth found herself having to motivate him so he wouldn't let himself be intimidated by the task. To give him credit, he genuinely tried his best and worked hard for his goal. 

But when they came back from the break, Annabeth started to notice that Percy acted unusually subdued. She could see the efforts he made to hide it, but his jokes came across as a little too forced and she found him distracted. Sometimes, when it was just the two of them together, he seemed to pull away at odd moments and he looked, if Annabeth dared to think it, to be feeling _guilty_. She tried to ask him what was wrong, but all he would admit to was that he had trouble sleeping. It was true that he looked more and more exhausted as the weeks went by, and Annabeth couldn't make her mind up on whether this was all it was about or not. 

Then one chilly January morning, Annabeth was coming out of her AP Art history class and walking down the hallway heading for her meeting point with Percy, who would be leaving his Geography class. One of her classmates, Lisa Orr, was walking with her; it was hard for Annabeth to make friends outside of the demigod world, but Lisa was nice and someone Annabeth enjoyed studying with so she was one of the people Annabeth gravitated toward when she was at school. Annabeth was busy outlining an essay in her head when Lisa nudged her shoulder, wrenching her out of her thoughts. 

"Hey, Annabeth," Lisa said. "Look, your boyfriend's acting weird."

One of Lisa's flaws was that she didn't seem to hold Percy in high esteem, even though she'd never explicitly said so. Annabeth frowned at her tone but looked up anyway. Percy was standing at the other end of the hallway in front of a row of lockers, and Annabeth immediately recognized his posture: he didn't actually have Riptide in his hand, but he was holding himself just like he was. A few other students who'd noticed him were whispering among themselves and pointing at him. Annabeth muttered a Greek curse and Lisa shot her a puzzled look.

"Excuse me," Annabeth murmured, and she hurried her steps.

As she got closer to Percy she was alarmed to notice how vacant his eyes were, as if he wasn't seeing what was in front of him--banged-up blue lockers, tiles dirtied by the trampling of hundreds of feet, the other students who were becoming increasingly aware of him--but another, more distressing scene. His face was locked into a rictus that Annabeth had only seen him wear during his most desperate battles. When Annabeth reached him she gently touched his shoulder, calling his name. 

"Percy? It's me, Annabeth."

He jumped and whirled around, and if he'd actually been holding his sword she would have been decapitated. Then he blinked and seemed to finally recognize her. 

"What're you--" He frantically looked around. "Where's Kronos?"

Annabeth's stomach tightened with anxiety, but she kept her voice calm and pitched low enough that her words wouldn't be easy to hear by the curious onlookers. 

"Kronos is gone, Percy," she said. "This was over a year ago. We're at school, remember?"

"School." Percy looked around again, and this time he saw the other kids giving him odd or amused looks. "Uhh. Yeah. I-I know. Of course, I know. Pff, Kronos, I don't even know why I said that."

He was flushing, embarrassed now, but it wasn't enough to make Annabeth not worry about how genuinely confused he'd looked a minute ago. 

"Let's get somewhere less crowded," she murmured to him, taking his elbow and leading him away. 

She found an empty classroom and pushed Percy inside. On the blackboard was a math problem that someone had forgotten to erase. Percy dropped at one of the desks, rubbing his face with both hands. 

"What happened?" Annabeth asked him. "Were you--hallucinating or something?"

Percy shook his head, his face still buried in his hands. "Not really, no. It was more like I was dreaming. I wasn't seeing Kronos at the school, it was like-like I was _back_ there, you know, still fighting him. Like in one of my dreams."

"Your dreams?"

"Yeah, I've been having a lot of nightmares, lately. They're--pretty vivid."

"You said you were having trouble sleeping, but you didn't tell me you had nightmares." At least it would explain why he'd been acting so odd lately, although not why he sometimes looked guilty. "Are they prophetic dreams or regular ones?"

"I would have told you if I thought they were meaningful. They're pretty run-of-the-mill as far as content is concerned--like, they're about things in my past or things I'm afraid of--but at the same time they feel… More disturbing. Scarier. I-I have a hard time calming down even once I'm fully conscious and I keep thinking about them during the day. It was the first time I had one when I'm not actually sleeping, though."

"Why didn't you tell me about them before? I know you told me you had issues with sleep, but you made it sound a lot less serious than--whatever this is."

Percy glanced at her and then away, and Annabeth saw that weird guilty expression flit across his face for a second. What was that about? The mystery was infuriating, but Percy looked so distraught that Annabeth put it aside and walked up to him, taking his hand. 

"Hey, talk to me," she said.

"I don't know why I didn't tell you." He sighed and leaned his forehead against her shoulder. "I guess I just didn't want to bother you with it."

"Your problems aren't a bother to me--they're _my_ problems too."

"Yeah, I know. I just thought I could handle it. They're just dreams."

"What happened right now wasn't 'just a dream.'" 

"Well, as I said," Percy mumbled, "it'd never happened before."

"We have to see Chiron," Annabeth said, stroking the back of his head. "He'll be able to help."

Chiron would help if the problem was of a supernatural nature. But what if it wasn't? Annabeth thought, her throat feeling tight. If Percy's problem was psychological, then how could he get any help when merely telling the truth about his life would mark him as crazy? 

"We'll go right now," Annabeth said. "We'll--we'll borrow a car, and--"

Percy pushed away to look at her. "We have class. _You_ have class. And what do you mean, borrow a car? My mom's using her car, and we don't know anyone else we could borrow a car from."

"I don't care about classes!"

"Who are you, and what did you do with my girlfriend?" Percy said jokingly, but all Annabeth could see now was how pale he looked and how sunken his eyes were. How could she not have realized how bad he was doing? "Annabeth," Percy added in a gentler voice. "We'll go see Chiron in the weekend, when we can borrow my mom's car and don't have to skip classes. It's only two days. I'll be fine--I've held on that long. But I don't want to get us into trouble, and I don't want to worry my mom. This can wait."

"What if you have more episodes like the one you just had?" Annabeth argued.

"At worst, I'll look like a weirdo. If it gets really bad, I'll go sleep it off in the infirmary. Two days is nothing. Don't worry."

He cupped her face and guided her down for a kiss. Annabeth closed her eyes and sighed, hugging him against her. 

"You better be fine, Seaweed Brain," she said. "Or you won't have to worry about nightmares anymore, because I'll make your waking hours a living hell."

Percy chuckled, his breath tickling the side of her neck. "Only you would be able to scare me into being okay," he said. 

Annabeth hugged him tighter, praying silently to her mother for protection and guidance. 

\---

Two days, as it happened, could feel close to two months. Percy was used to desperate quests on a tight schedule, where days flew past you at top speed and you suddenly realized that, hey, by the way, you only have two days left to save the world! Classes sometimes felt like they lasted forever, or at least they did to Percy, but at least they were only part of the day.

Percy woke up on Friday with a gasp, phantom pain clinging to all of his limbs from the memory of dying of the _arai_ curse. His head was still full of the nightmarish vision of Tartarus he'd had at that moment, of the blistering ground and the boiling sky, the poisoned air that was the breath of the dark god himself. He sat up in his bed, shaking as if he were the center of his own personal earthquake. He'd forgotten that part; his brain must have shelved it away as junk memory after he got better. But now he remembered what it had looked like to see Tartarus as it really was, and he also remembered thinking that it must have been what Nico had seen too, and that it had almost driven him mad. 

Percy groaned, rapping his knuckles against his forehead as a punishment. He should _not_ be thinking about Nico. Nothing good would come out of it. It was still so early that it was generous to consider the time as 'morning', but Percy knew he would find no more sleep, or that if he did it would only bring him new nightmares. So he got out of bed and went to the bathroom, trying his hardest to be quiet so he wouldn't alert his mom and Paul to the fact that he was awake. His mom worried about him enough as it was.

The harsh bathroom lighting did him no favor, and when Percy caught sight of himself in the mirror above the sink he did a double-take. He looked like a fresh corpse, or like Nico when they'd just freed him from the jar. Percy winced at the thought, and gave his reflection in the mirror a stern look. 

"You're hopeless," he told it. "I hope you know that."

Thinking about Nico was dangerous territory. For the last two days, Annabeth had been downright clingy. Not that Percy could blame her, because he would probably have been even worse if the situations were reversed. The problem wasn't Annabeth, but that every time she acted concerned or started to fuss over him, Percy would burn from guilt and shame. 

He'd followed Jason's advice and gone to Camp Half-Blood before school started again. He'd seen Piper and Jason and it had been nice, and he'd seen Nico, which had felt slightly awkward but mostly nice too. They'd all hung out together for a day, and it was fun and games until they decided to spar with each other. Then there'd been a moment when Percy and Nico had locked swords, inches from each other--sweat made Nico's dark hair cling to his forehead, his usually pale face was flushed from the exertion, and Percy had been hit again by a sudden desire to kiss him, except this time the thought had been a lot better defined and harder to dismiss. Nico had won this round, to his surprise since Percy was normally the better of the two with a sword. 

To make it worse, Percy had kind of lied to Annabeth about his recent dreams. The truth was, not _all_ of them were nightmares. For the past couple of weeks some of the dreams had been of the variety that left him with sticky underwear, and those were all about Nico. As nice as the dreams were in themselves, dealing with them and the guilt they brought when he was awake was a whole other kind of hell. He felt like the worst boyfriend ever, but he had no idea how to make things right and his troubled sleep seemed to have made his brain shrink alarmingly--like it had literally been replaced with seaweed as in Annabeth's nickname for him. 

At breakfast, his mother tutted worriedly at him, suggesting that he should take the day off, and Percy had to use energy he didn't have to spare to reassure her that he was fine, just a little under the weather, and that it wasn't worth skipping class over. Privately, he reassured himself that tomorrow Annabeth and he would go see Chiron, and that the centaur would know what was wrong and how to fix it. Then Percy would be able to sleep again, Annabeth and his mother would stop worrying, and he could try to find a solution to his more mundane problem of being attracted to someone who wasn't his girlfriend. 

The morning dragged on and it was all Percy could do to keep himself awake. At this point, the only thing that motivated him not to succumb to the temptation was that he didn't want to wake up screaming in front of the whole class, because he certainly wasn't registering much of the lessons. When he was better, he promised himself, he would find a few helpful classmates and ask their help with what he'd missed. 

At noon he was supposed to meet with Annabeth for lunch, so he hauled himself across the hallways feeling like he was carrying his own dead body. He stopped on his way to drop a few books in his locker. Next to it was a shadowed recess that held a water fountain--not the place Percy would expect anyone to step out of, so he was understandably startled when someone _did_.

"Hey, Percy," said the person. 

"Oh, gods!"

It was Nico, of course, the only guy that Percy knew who could actually step out of the shadows, wearing a black leather jacket open on a t-shirt with dancing skeletons. He was looking at Percy with a rather amused expression. 

"Sorry," he said, although he didn't sound very sorry. 

"Is there a way you could adjust your shadow-traveling so it would announce your coming with trumpets or something?" Percy grumbled, but now that his brain had caught on to the fact that the newcomer wasn't a danger his heartbeat was starting to slow down. 

Once the shock had passed, though, he wondered what Nico was doing here. Last time he'd seen him, Nico still had to use his shadow-travel with caution. He wouldn't have come here without a good reason, but there was nothing urgent about his behavior. 

"Is something wrong?" Percy asked, vaguely alarmed. "Everything okay at camp?"

"Everything's fine," Nico said nonchalantly. "Do I really need a reason to come and see you?"

"Well, no, but--" Nico had stepped closer and Percy had to make a conscious effort not to step back. "It's just, I thought you had to take it easy with your shadow-travel. Between camp and here is a bit of a jump."

"Oh, I'm all healed up, now. It's no trouble. I just wanted to see you."

"Oh," Percy said.

He felt dumb, even more than he'd had for the past few days since exhaustion had really started to take its toll. He was trying to act casual, but it was hard to ignore the newfound awareness he had of Nico--especially when Nico was looking at him with that kind of intensity, as if Percy bore the weight of his whole focus. As if the same thoughts that were running through Percy's mind were going through his mind too. Percy licked his lips, his heart racing. 

"So," he said, barely knowing how he meant to end that sentence. Something was off, but his thoughts buzzed too loudly for him to make sense of them. "I was just about to meet Annabeth for lunch. Do you want to--"

"I didn't really come to see Annabeth."

"Ah, okay."

"I came to see you."

Percy swallowed hard. Nico had continued to move forward and he was so close that it had become obvious that they were almost the same height, now. He smelled earthy--not in a bad way, but like the ground after a shower of rain. 

"Nico," Percy started, but then forgot what he wanted to say when Nico pushed him against the lockers and kissed him. 

He went stiff with shock, and for a moment he couldn't react one way or another. But then his body woke up before his brain could and Percy started to respond, opening his mouth to welcome Nico's tongue. Nico didn't feel inexperienced the way Percy would have thought, but was bold, self-assured, his hot wet mouth insistent against Percy's and his hands firmly gripping Percy's coat. It was all Percy could do to keep up, the feeling of Nico's solid body as it pushed him up against the locker making him feel feverish.

"Percy?"

He'd closed his eyes but the sound of Annabeth's voice made them fly open. He pressed a hand against his mouth, which the kiss had left tingling, and looked at Annabeth with wide eyes. 

"Annabeth," he said, trying to think past the voice screaming in his head _you screwed up, you screwed up, you screwed up!_ "It's not what--"

"Are you okay?" she asked. "Did you have--" She lowered her voice. "Was it another dream?"

"What?"

It was only then that Percy realized that Nico was nowhere to be seen. Even though Percy had closed his eyes, it didn't seem possible for Nico to have moved away and shadow-traveled that fast. Percy shook his head, trying to clear it. Now that he was thinking about it, the whole scene seemed really improbable. Nico, risking shadow-traveling just to come see Percy and make out with him against the lockers? Not caring about the betrayal to Annabeth or that she might catch them doing it? Even if Nico hadn't already moved on, it didn't feel like something he would do. Otherwise, wouldn't he have tried something like that back when he actually had feelings for Percy?

"Percy, I'm getting really worried." Annabeth pressed a hand against his cheek and made him look at her. "Are you with me, now? Say something, please."

"I--" His brain couldn't shake off the idea that Annabeth must have seen what he'd done with Nico, but she wouldn't look at him with such open loving concern if she had; somehow, it made Percy feel worse rather than better. "I think I was dreaming again."

Annabeth's face hardened. "We're going to camp. We need to see Chiron _now_."

"Let's--let's wait until classes are over." He needed to gather his thoughts before he talked to Chiron.

"Right after class, then. We're not waiting until tomorrow." Her eyes softened and she stroked a thumb under his eye. "You can't keep going like this."

"We'll go after class, I promise."

It was only through sheer will power that Percy went through the afternoon, and afterward he wouldn't have been able to say anything about the classes he attended. When they went back to Percy's place to get the car, Percy could tell that his mom knew that something serious was going on because she didn't raise a word of protest. Instead she hugged him, kissed his forehead as if he were still a little kid, and made him promise to tell her what'd happened when he was back. 

Camp Half-Blood was even more deserted than during Christmas break, but they found Chiron at the Big House and explained to him what was going on. Or at least, Annabeth explained while Percy twitched restlessly at her side, feeling both so exhausted that all he wanted was to lie down on the floor and sleep, and so keyed up that he wished he could jump out of his own skin. 

"It sounds like a curse," Chiron said. "A binding spell, I would say."

"A binding spell?" Percy repeated. 

The word 'curse' didn't exactly summon warm and fuzzy feelings in him, but Chiron didn't look overly alarmed. Of course they were all used to deal with end-of-the-world stuff, so it didn't mean much.

"You mean like a curse tablet?" Annabeth said, because of course she knew what it was. 

"What's that?" Percy asked.

" _Katadesmos_ in Greek. It was a type of curse commonly practiced throughout the Greco-Roman world by people who weren't magic users," Annabeth explained. "Anybody could do it. The person would ask a divinity or a spirit to compel the subject of the curse or perform an action on them. The text with the curse's specificities was scratched on a tablet and generally buried in a fresh grave."

"Ew, okay," Percy said. "So, someone did this to me?"

"Someone who doesn't like you very much," Chiron said, "but who also doesn't have powers of their own." 

"How do we break it?" Annabeth asked.

"I can think of three ways: you find the person who did this and ask them to break it, or you find the tablet itself or the divinity whose powers were invoked. Maybe we can--"

He was interrupted by someone lightly knocking on the door. 

"Chiron, are you there? I felt something--" 

The door opened and Nico entered. Percy's heart skipped a beat and he hurriedly looked away; seeing Nico so soon after his dream from this morning felt impossibly awkward. 

"Annabeth?" Nico said. "Percy? What's wrong with you?"

"Ah, Nico," Chiron said. "You might be able to help us with the issue at hand. It seems like Percy is the victim of a binding spell. I haven't seen one of those in a long time, but I remember that the divinities invoked are often gods or spirits of the Underworld."

"A curse? So that's what I was feeling. That energy--And now I can _see_ it."

Percy risked a glance in his direction. "What do you see?"

"It's like this aura around you," Nico said. The weight of his dark eyes made Percy's face feel hot. "And it has hooks into you. It looks pretty bad."

Percy laughed bitterly. "It _feels_ pretty bad."

"Can you do anything?" Annabeth asked anxiously. 

"I don't know," Nico said. "I've never actually seen this before. I've just read about binding spells."

"If you could only tell us which divinity has been used as an agent," Chiron said. "That would be very helpful."

"I can try," Nico said, although he looked hesitant. 

Percy opened his mouth to say that trying sounded fantastic, but before he could Chiron's living room had dissolved and Percy was left standing in Tartarus.

\---

Nico saw the dark aura around Percy's body start spinning like a whirlpool, and suddenly Percy's eyes went vacant and his face became slack.

"What's going on?" Nico asked, startled and worried. The aura had shifted to a deep purple hue that was almost black, and it felt cold and cruel. "What's happening to him?"

"He's having a dream," Annabeth said, her tone absentminded, before she leaned over to her boyfriend and gently called his name.

"A dream? He was awake a second ago!"

"The curse is getting more powerful," Chiron said darkly. "It must be a nasty one."

Percy seemed completely unaware of the conversation around him. He stumbled to his feet, moving as though he were too exhausted to stand. His face twisted into a grimace of pain and grim determination, and he raised his arm as if he were trying to hold up his sword but found its weight almost too much to bear. 

"I'm sorry," he was muttering, his words slurred. "Sorry, Bob. Protect Annabeth…"

Bob? Percy must be dreaming about Tartarus, then. Annabeth had realized this too, because her face had gone deathly pale. Percy pitched forward and Nico instinctively dove to catch him. Percy blinked, and at first it seemed like he'd recognized Nico because he mumbled his name followed by another string of apologies but then he still looked dazed and unaware of his surroundings. 

"Sshh, it's okay," Nico murmured to him. "I've got you, it's okay. I'm going to help you. You'll be fine."

Most of Percy's weight rested on him and he was starting to get heavy, so Nico carefully led him down to the floor and kneeled beside him. He took Percy's face between his hands; up close, Nico could see how badly the curse had affected him, making his face gaunt and his eyes shadowed. _I have to do something._

Nico closed his eyes and focused on the dark energy he could feel around Percy. With his mind he tried to grab it, tear it away, but the energy felt like it was slipping from his grip. It pulsed slowly like a heartbeat and seemed to grow stronger by the second, as if it were feeding from Percy's pain. 

"Nico?" Annabeth called. "Can you do something? Can you help him?"

"I don't think I can break the curse," Nico said desperately, opening his eyes again.

Percy seemed about to lose consciousness, his head only holding up because Nico was clasping it between his hands. His breathing was ragged and he felt too hot to the touch. Could the curse actually _kill_ him? At the thought, it felt like a hand of ice had closed around Nico's heart. He couldn't let this happen; he just couldn't. It was useless to keep trying to deny the truth: he was still in love with Percy. Maybe he'd never stopped. Instead of the old anguish, though, all Nico could feel was steely determination. It didn't matter that Percy would never love him in the same way. Nico couldn't stand to see him suffer and he would do anything to stop it.

"I think I have an idea," he said slowly. It was a bad idea, but when things got desperate enough bad ideas became good ones, or so it seemed to work in the demigod world. 

"What--" said Annabeth, but Nico wasn't listening to her anymore.

He leaned his forehead against Percy's and focused again on the dark energy. This time, instead of trying to tear it apart Nico welcomed it, calling it to himself. _You want pain? Then come and get it!_ A cold wave rushed over him and Nico jerked backward as if he'd been slapped in the face. When he opened his eyes again, Percy was looking back at him with awareness this time. His eyes were filled with tears, his mouth half open, and he had a weird expression on his face, as though he'd never seen Nico before. 

"Nico? What--what happened?" he stammered.

"You should be fine, now. Do you feel any different?"

"Uh, yes. I feel--lighter. I think it's gone. What did you do?"

"I sent it away," Nico said, helping Percy up. His own legs felt weak and wobbly.

Annabeth rushed to Percy's side, throwing her arms around him. Nico dropped on a couch and watched the couple embrace, prodding at his own feelings. It still hurt a little to see Percy and Annabeth softly whisper to each other, both so lost in the other that they'd probably forgotten there were other people in the room, but not as much as it used to. Mostly he was glad that what he'd done had worked, and glad to see them happy. They both deserved it. 

"Nico?"

Nico started at Percy's calling of his name, opening his eyes--he hadn't realized he'd closed them and had been about to doze off, huddled in the leather couch. Percy was holding Annabeth's hand but he was watching Nico, his brow wrinkled in concern.

"Are you okay?"

"Tired," Nico said. He could feel the aura of the curse like a layer of dirt on his skin. "What about you?"

Percy rubbed his eyes. "Tired too. But I can feel it's gone. Funny, I hadn't realized how much of a weight it was until it'd been lifted. And it's thanks to you, man. You keep saving my life."

"We keep saving each other," Nico said.

Percy gave him an exhausted half-smile. He let go of Annabeth's hand and stepped up to Nico, opening his arms. 

"I know you're not a fan, but I think that deserves a hug, doesn't it?"

"Uhh, thanks, but--" Percy started to lower his arms, his smile fading and being replaced by an embarrassed grimace. Oh, to Tartarus with it, Nico thought. If he wanted to keep being friends with Percy, he had to get used to this. "All right. Let's not make it a habit, though."

"'Course not."

Nico let Percy wrap him in his arms, and after a second of hesitation he gingerly hugged back, trying not to breathe in too deeply Percy's ocean scent. Percy felt warm, but not feverishly so the way he'd been a minute ago. Nico could actually feel his heart beat, a rhythmic, comforting thump that let Nico know he was alive and well. Percy took a shaky breath and for a brief moment he hugged Nico tighter, his forehead resting on Nico's shoulder, before he dropped his arms and stepped away. 

"Thanks again," he said.

"No problem."

At that moment Nico looked in Annabeth's direction, and he was struck by the closed-off, severe expression on her face. He felt suddenly guilty, as if she'd caught him doing something wrong with her boyfriend, as if she could see clearly inside his mind. No doubts Percy's own thoughts were miles away from anything but innocent gratitude, but _Nico_ 's weren't. Nico cleared his throat and sat back down on the couch. 

Chiron, who'd been watching the whole scene in silent benevolence, said to Annabeth, "Why don't you take Percy back home? He looks just about to drop."

"I'm fine," Percy protested, but he let himself be led away by the hand without resistance.

Annabeth told Chiron and Nico goodbye and ushered Percy out of the room. Once they were gone, Chiron swiveled his fake wheelchair so he could face Nico. 

"So, what did you do?" he asked. 

"What do you mean?" Nico said, playing his with silver ring and not watching Chiron in the eye. 

"You couldn't break the spell--you said it yourself. You had another idea, but you never explained what it was. 'I sent it away' doesn't explain much. If the spell isn't broken, then it needs a target. You can't simply wave it away."

"And yet I did."

"You took it on, didn't you? Nico, look at me." Chiron's voice had turned gentle; Nico had never heard the centaur speak to him that way. "You know you just moved the problem, right? The spell still needs to be broken."

"The spell is about dreams, right? I have a measure of control over dreams--I'm not as good as a child of Hypnos, but I can make do. And it's fueled by powers from the Underworld. I'm better equipped than Percy to handle it."

"Can you recognize the power?"

"No. It doesn't come from my father, that's for sure. Otherwise, I don't know. It feels kind of familiar, but I've spent so much time in the Underworld that it doesn't help much. Who knows, maybe it's going to peter out since I'm not the original target."

"It's possible," Chiron said. "Especially with Lord Hades being your father. If the power source realizes who you are, they may break the curse on their own not to get in trouble with him."

Nico smiled thinly. "The perks of being a son of Hades."

"But you have to promise me that as soon as you can feel the curse get active, you'll come and tell me."

"Okay. But don't tell Percy and Annabeth about what I did. I don't want it to make them feel guilty. It was my decision and I'll face the consequences, whatever they are."

"I promise."

"Swear it on the River Styx."

Chiron lifted an eyebrow. "Isn't it a little overkill?" 

"This was one of my father's most costly lessons," Nico said. "Can't trust a promise unless it's truly binding."

"Oh, Nico," Chiron said, sounding sad. "All right, then I swear upon the River Styx that I won't tell Percy and Annabeth that you have taken on Percy's curse."

After that, Chiron all but ordered Nico to go back to his cabin to rest. Lying down on his bed--a normal bunk bed since he'd gotten rid of those awful coffin-like beds--Nico wondered what in his father's name he'd done again out of love. 

\---

Annabeth was the one who had to explain to Sally Jackson what had happened, because by the time they were back to New York, Percy was barely able to stay keep his eyes open. He slept the whole weekend away, apparently a sound, nightmare-free sleep according to the regular updates that Annabeth got from his mom. Annabeth lived on her own in a small studio, and since she didn't have a lot of homework to do this weekend she had too much free time to think and no one to distract her. And, unfortunately, her thoughts were troubled.

Now that Percy had gone back to normal and there seemed to be no impending doom for the moment, Annabeth should have been left with nothing but schoolwork to worry about. But suspicion had planted a seed into her heart, and as the weekend went on that seed grew into a poisonous plant. She knew Percy well, and he wasn't exactly a hard book to read. When Nico had taken away the curse, Percy's face as he looked at him had hidden nothing. Annabeth's heart had sunk when she'd recognized an expression that she'd only ever seen directed at herself. 

In retrospect, it explained a lot: Percy getting weird that time they were making out and she'd mentioned Nico in the bathroom, the strange guilty looks he kept giving her. She couldn't bring herself to believe that he'd cheated on her, but at least the thought was there. Whether it was simply attraction or something deeper, Percy didn't fully belong to her anymore and Annabeth didn't know what to do with this. For so long he'd been her rock, even before they started dating. In Tartarus, she wouldn't have survived without him giving her the motivation to go on. He was featured in most of her plans for the future. What would she do without him?

When, on Sunday afternoon as she was doing the dishes, Annabeth found herself having to stop and breathe so she wouldn't start crying, she knew she had to talk to someone. And who else could she ask advice about her love life but a child of Aphrodite?

She created a rainbow above her sink, using a flashlight. She threw a golden drachma and murmured, "Oh Iris, goddess of the Rainbow, please accept my offering." When Piper's floating face appeared, Annabeth immediately felt a rush of relief at not having to handle this alone anymore. Piper was very grounded in her emotions; she would know how Annabeth was supposed to deal with this cataclysm. 

"Hey," Piper said, smiling warmly at Annabeth. "Nice of you to call. How have you been?"

Annabeth had planned to calmly expose the facts to her friend and then ask her for her council. Instead, she opened her mouth and broke down crying. 

"Annabeth!" Piper exclaimed, sounding alarmed. "What's wrong? Are you hurt? Are you in danger?"

"N-no," Annabeth managed to get out. 

"Did something happen? Is something wrong with Percy?"

Annabeth clamped her hand on her mouth to stifle her sobs. Falling apart wouldn't help anything. She had to be stronger than this. After a minute, she managed to get it together and tell Piper about the dream curse, how Nico had saved Percy, and what her suspicions were. 

Piper's mouth was round with surprise. "Oh," she said. "That's--wow."

"What do you mean, 'wow'?" Annabeth asked, a little peeved. "There's nothing 'wow' about the situation."

"I mean--are you sure? Percy's so completely devoted to you. I'd never have thought."

Piper's words made Annabeth's certainty waver. Since they'd started dating, she'd never had any cause to doubt Percy's feelings for her. They'd been through so much together, even literal _hell_. But then the image of Percy looking at Nico flitted across her mind and any hope that she might have been wrong vanished. 

"I'm sure," she said grimly. "I know Percy. Also, I've had the feeling that something was off for a while." She told Piper about Percy's strange behavior this past month. "I knew there was something other than the curse going on. You know what, is Jason around? Maybe Percy told him something."

"I can get him for you." 

Piper disappeared for a moment and came back with Jason in tow. She must not have told him what they needed him for, because at first he smiled brightly at Annabeth and waved his hand.

"Hey, Annabeth--" His face fell. He must have seen on Annabeth's face the marks of her crying; even though he was her friend and she trusted him with her life, the thought embarrassed her. "What's wrong?"

Piper had to tell him, because Annabeth didn't feel like going over this again. When Piper mentioned Percy's possible feelings for Nico, Jason's expression immediately betrayed him.

"You know something," Annabeth said. She hadn't meant to sound so angry, but she couldn't help feeling betrayed. "What is it?"

"Is that true?" Piper asked, glaring at her boyfriend.

"Hey, wow, calm down, you two," Jason protested, raising both hands. "Percy told me something, but it was in confidence. He didn't want anyone else to know."

"He told you he was feeling something for Nico," Annabeth said, hollowness settling in her stomach.

"Gods, this is--" Jason sighed, combing a hand through his hair. "Okay, you seem to have figured it out, so--Yeah, he told me he felt attracted to Nico. He'd only just figured it out after your quest to fight the Cretan Bull. He wasn't even sure it couldn't just be adrenaline or something. But I swear, Annabeth, nothing happened. Nico doesn't know anything about it. Percy loves you and the last thing he wants is to break up with you."

"You need to talk to him," Piper said. "Figure things out together. Him being attracted to someone else doesn't have to mean that it's over between you. If you're the person he wants to be with, then it's all that matters."

"You're right," Annabeth said, clinging to the edge of the sink. "I'll wait until he's better--"

"Don't wait for too long," Piper said. "You'll keep feeling worse until you can talk to him."

Piper was right, as usual when it came to that sort of things. The next day, when Annabeth saw Percy at school it was hard to act like everything was normal. Percy looked a lot better, though still tired, and he said he hadn't had any odd dream during the weekend. Still, Annabeth didn't want to get into this at school, so she suggested they study at her place after class. It wasn't anything unusual but Percy looked at her in askance, as if he could sense that something was wrong. By the time they left school, the butterflies in Annabeth's stomach fluttered so hard that she felt almost nauseous. 

"Are you all right?" Percy asked as they were riding the subway. "You look queasy."

"I'm fine," Annabeth said. "Well, I'll tell you when we get home."

"Now I'm getting worried. Don't tell me there's another curse going on," Percy said, not really sounding as if he were joking.

Annabeth forced out a laugh. "No. Nothing so dire. It's--" She wanted to say 'it's nothing', but couldn't make herself do it. "No one's in danger."

They didn't talk for the rest of the journey. At Annabeth's place, Percy dropped his schoolbag on the couch and turned to her.

"What's going on?"

"There's something I wanted to talk to you about." Annabeth drew herself a chair. "You better sit down."

"I've been told that nothing good was ever said after those words," Percy said weakly, but he sat down on the couch.

"So," Annabeth said, lacing her fingers over her knees, and then her mind drew a blank. 

She hadn't thought about how she wanted to handle this. Was it better to be stern and accusing, or more conciliatory? Or should she interrogate him and force him to betray himself? She looked at him--his eyebrows knitted in concern, his hair that looked like it'd been ruffled by the wind, and the sea-green shade of his eyes that she never got tired of--and she knew that she didn't want to lose him. The simple thought broke her heart in two. 

"How do you feel about Nico?" she blurted out.

Percy blanched at her words, and even if Jason had already confirmed her fears it still hurt to know for sure that she'd been right.

"What--I don't--why are you asking me this?" 

"I saw the way you looked at him when he lifted your curse. I've--I've only ever seen you look at _me_ like that."

"The way I looked--Oh, gods, this can't be happening." Percy buried his face in his hands for a second, then looked up again at Annabeth in a panic. "You have to believe me, I didn't cheat on you! Nico doesn't even--"

"I know," Annabeth said. He could have been lying, but she really doubted it. She didn't think he would have been able to hide something that big from her. "Jason told me."

" _Jason_ told you?" Percy said, frowning. "Oh, that little--"

"Don't blame him," Annabeth said. "I had already figured it out and he only confirmed it. He was trying to defend you. Why didn't you tell me?"

Percy snorted. "How could I tell you? I didn't want you to think--whatever you're probably thinking now. I was hoping it was nothing and that it would pass."

Annabeth thought again about the look on Percy's face, and about the way he and Nico had hugged. 

"I probably shouldn't have hugged him the other day," Percy said, as if reading her thoughts. "I hadn't seen him in a month so I wanted to check something. See how I felt. And--"

"And it didn't feel like nothing," Annabeth said softly. She was holding her interlaced fingers so tightly together that they were bloodless.

Percy hung his head low. "No," he said, his voice cracking on the syllable. "It didn't feel like nothing. I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize." Annabeth took a deep breath. "The real question is: what do you want?"

He raised his head, looking at her with wide eyes. "You mean--you're not breaking up with me?"

"Unless that's what you want."

"No, no, no, I don't want to break up! I love you, Annabeth. I know you don't have to believe it, but it's true. I never even questioned it."

Percy had moved almost to the edge of his seat, so intent he was on convincing her. He radiated sincerity. _If you're the person he wants to be with, then it's all that matters,_ Piper had said. Annabeth didn't want to lose Percy; she didn't feel strong enough to let him go. 

"I don't want to break up either," she said, her voice trembling for the first time in the conversation. "But-but let's not go back to camp for a while, all right? We'll be really busy with school anyway."

"Yes, okay, anything you want," he said.

He reached out for her and she took his hand. They rose to their feet at the same time, and before Annabeth realized she'd moved they were clutching each other and kissing, a gasping, desperate kiss as though they'd just come out of a life or death situation. Then they hugged, Percy's face nestled into the crook of Annabeth's neck. 

"I love you," he murmured. "I love you, I love you."

"Shh." She stroked his hair. "I know."

\---

Over the next two months things seem to settle down with Annabeth, or so Percy hoped. They didn't have a lot of time for romance anyway, and most of their time together was spent studying. Percy had passed the SAT and had scored well enough, but preparation for the DSTOMP--whatever those letters stood for--was seriously kicking his ass, especially the poetry and music analysis part. He sometimes had visions of the future where Annabeth managed to pass it and he didn't. She would go to California and Percy would get into whatever university he could gain entrance to, and they would be once again separated most of the year. Away from him, Annabeth would have more than enough time to wonder whether she'd done the right thing not breaking up with him when she'd learned about his feelings for Nico. 

Percy hadn't seen or talked to Nico since Nico had dealt with the curse. Annabeth hadn't explicitly forbidden it, but Percy didn't want to take any chance while they were still on shaky grounds. It didn't stop him from wondering how Nico was doing and what he was up to. Every week, he had to talk himself out of asking if they could go visit camp. He could have tried an I-M, but he couldn't bring himself to ask Annabeth if she minded, and even less to do it behind her back. Whatever he did, he was either a shitty friend or a shitty boyfriend and it sucked. 

Spring break started on the third week of March and took Percy by surprise. He felt like he'd spent the past few months in deep waters, holding his breath, and was finally allowed to take a breath of fresh air--except that he could actually breathe under water and swimming was awesome, so that probably wasn't the best analogy. Annabeth and he were having a rare night off at her place, watching a movie huddled on the couch together, with no textbook or notebook or pencil in sight. Percy had needed to beg a little to get this special treat, because Annabeth seemed to _gain_ energy from studying rather than spend it like a normal person. It must have been some sort of godly ability that she'd gotten from her mother. 

They'd made popcorn, and for the past ten minutes had been trying to throw it in each other's mouth instead of watching the movie, when they were interrupted by an Iris-message: a rainbow unfolded like a ribbon and Chiron's face appeared inside it.

"Good evening, Annabeth, Percy."

Annabeth straightened up and started to hurriedly brush popcorn off her clothes, trying to regain a little dignity. Percy figured that no one expected dignity from him and merely said, "Hey, Chiron, how's it going?"

"I'm doing well, thanks. How is school?"

"Spring break just started," Percy said.

"Oh, good."

A moment of silence floated by. "Is everything all right at camp?" Annabeth asked, her brow furrowed.

"Oh, it's fairly quiet, just--have you two been in contact with Nico recently?"

The name dropped between Percy and Annabeth like a stone in a pond. 

"No, not in a while," Percy said, trying not to look at Annabeth. "Why? Is he--is he okay?"

"He's--well, if it's not too much trouble, it would be nice of you to come and check on him."

Chiron's words were casual but his face was grim. Percy felt worry start to bubble in his stomach, as if he'd eaten a bad burrito. 

"Why?" Annabeth asked. "Chiron, what aren't you tell us? Did something happen?"

"I can't tell you," he said. "I made a promise."

Percy and Annabeth shared a look. A promise one couldn't talk about? Chiron must have made an oath on the River Styx. This smelled like trouble.

"We can come tonight," Annabeth said. "When Percy's mom comes back from work…"

Annabeth looked quizzically at Percy and he nodded. "Yeah, I'll ask her if I can borrow her car and we'll come. That's a couple of hours. Will that be all right?"

"Yes, you should be there on time. I'll see you soon, then."

The mist dissolved and Chiron's face vanished. Percy sat there for a moment, the centaur's words echoing in his mind. What did he mean, that they'd be there on time? On time for _what_? What was wrong with Nico?

He risked a glance at Annabeth. "Are you sure--"

"Of course, I'm sure." Her face was impassive, the way it was when she didn't want to betray her emotions. "Chiron called us for a reason. We need to go."

They hurried to Percy's place and found that his mom had already come back from work. Percy kind of hated the fact that as soon as she saw them come in, she instantly looked worried and asked what was wrong. He also hated the fact that he couldn't answer her because he didn't even know what exactly was wrong. He drove his mom's Prius to Camp Half-Blood in a state of growing anxiety, drumming his fingers against the wheel and bitching incessantly against the existence of all the other drivers and their cars. 

"Relax," Annabeth said, although she didn't sound very relaxed herself. She was looking through the rain-pattered window and her posture was tense. "You getting yourself worked up isn't going to make us get there sooner."

"Yeah, I know, I'm just--"

"Worried about Nico, yes."

 _Here we go_ , Percy thought. They hadn't even mentioned Nico's name since their conversation about Percy's feelings. Anytime they discussed their other demigod friends they had to skirt awkwardly around the subject of Nico. But if they were about to see him, then they couldn't do this anymore.

"Does it bother you?" Percy asked, keeping his eyes on the road. "That I worry about him."

"You would worry about any of your friends in the same circumstances," Annabeth said. "And you've always worried a lot about Nico. Remember the months spent looking for him after he ran away from camp?"

Percy almost smiled, but Annabeth's tone hadn't invited fond reminiscence. The silence was only broken by the _shh shh_ from the wipers on the windshield. 

"So we're cool?" Percy eventually asked.

"We're cool."

At Camp Half-Blood the weather magic was working at full power and the temperature was mild, with no rain. Chiron was waiting for them on the porch of the Big House.

"You made good time," he commented. "Let's get inside; Nico should be there soon." He shot them a look over his shoulder as he was about to get in. "He doesn't know I've called you. He's probably not going to be happy about it."

Great, more mystery. Percy refrained from asking Chiron questions since his promise probably wouldn't let him answer, and followed him inside. At least, Nico wasn't in the infirmary and was well enough to get pissed off. Whatever had happened, Percy was starting to be more confident that they could deal with it. 

In the living room, Seymour the stuffed leopard was awake and glancing around nervously. _I feel you, buddy,_ Percy thought, wiping his sweaty hands on his jeans. His heart was dancing the samba in his ribcage and he didn't even know what made him so agitated, at least until Nico showed up.

He'd never gotten into the habit of wearing the camp's orange t-shirt and was dressed in his usual black outfit. Maybe he was afraid he'd lose his Ghost King cred if he ever wore any color brighter than a thundercloud. The black clothes heightened his pallor and his hair looked like he'd just dragged himself out of bed. At first, all Percy felt was relief that he looked in one piece, walking on his two legs and not bleeding from anywhere obvious. Then the relief turned into something softer and more--pleasant. It was a shock, how good it felt to see Nico after two months. Gods, but Percy had _missed_ him. 

Sadly, Nico didn't seem to feel the same. When he saw that Percy and Annabeth were there with Chiron, his mouth pinched and he glared daggers at the centaur. 

"You _called_ them," he said, his voice sharp and accusing. "I said--"

"I didn't tell them anything, and that's all I'd promised," Chiron said evenly. "Now, _you_ tell them what's going on."

"I can handle this on my own," Nico said mutinously. He turned to Percy and Annabeth, still scowling. "Everything's fine! You didn't have to come."

"We're here, now," Percy said. "Might as well tell us what's up."

Nico eyed him and Annabeth warily, looking like a wild animal trapped in a corner. Now that Percy was taking the time to examine him, his earlier relief that Nico appeared all right was mitigated by several worrying signs. During Christmas break, Nico had looked the most relaxed and at ease that Percy had ever seen him since Bianca's death years ago. He'd fit in at camp and wasn't so angry and guarded anymore. But now he seemed to have reverted to what he used to be--he acted tense and on edge, his dark eyes shuttered against any intrusion. Worse than that, he looked exhausted and even paler than usual. The sight made Percy's heart clench from worry and fear. Something was very _wrong_. 

Echoing Percy's thoughts, Chiron gently told Nico, "Sit down before you fall over, Nico, and then tell them everything."

Nico's shoulders sagged and he sat on the couch the farthest from Percy and Annabeth. He ran a hand through his hair, looking so tired and defeated that all Percy wanted was to go to him and give him a hug. It was likely to earn him either a punch in the face or a Stygian sword in the gut, though, so he stayed put. 

"It's about your curse, Percy," Nico said after a moment of silence. "I wasn't exactly honest with you. The truth is, I couldn't break it. It's still active."

Percy felt cold fingers tickle down his spine. "But--I haven't had any unusual dreams lately. Do you mean it could _come back_?"

"No," Nico said. He glanced at Chiron, giving him one last murderous look, before he elaborated, "It's not going to bother you again, because it has a new target. I kind of--redirected it."

It took Percy's brain a few seconds to put the pieces together: why Nico looked so tired, why he was so adamant that he could 'handle it.' He heard Annabeth gasp softly, and it was then that the truth dawned on him. 

"You redirected it to _you_ ," he said. "And then… You made Chiron swear not to tell us? Why?"

Nico looked at him with shadowed eyes. "The reason I didn't want you to know is the face you're making right now. You're going to make it a bigger deal than it is."

"I've been on the receiving end of that curse!" Percy's heart was pounding too hard and he felt sick. "I know exactly how not fun it is. How did you--"

"I was doing fine at first," Nico said. "I know how to push away dreams, so it wasn't really any worse than usual."

"We were hoping that the divinity that lent power to the curse would hesitate to harm Lord Hades' own child," Chiron said. "But it doesn't seem to have worked out."

"What do you mean, you were doing fine 'at first'?" Percy asked. "Did the nightmares get worse? Did you--did you have one of those waking dreams I had?"

Nico's silence answered for him. Percy swallowed, feeling guilt weigh down his stomach like lead. For the past two months, Nico had been wrestling with that curse for _his_ sake, and Percy hadn't known because he'd let him fall by the wayside. 

"What were you about to do?" Annabeth asked. "When Chiron called us he seemed to imply that there was a deadline of some sort. How did you mean to deal with the curse?"

Nico shot her an annoyed look. Percy recognized the feeling; it meant _why do you have to be so perceptive?_ and it was often directed at Annabeth. 

"I imagine you were looking for a way to break the curse," Annabeth said when Nico didn't answer. "Chiron said that you had to find the source of its power, the person who created the curse, or the tablet itself. Do you have any lead?"

"Were you going to do this on your own?" Percy asked. 

"It's why I called you," Chiron said, which earned him another withering look from Nico. "Nico, it's not prudent to journey on your own. What if you have another waking dream?"

"I don't need an escort," Nico mumbled. "I was just going to visit my stepmother, Persephone. I know the power source of the curse isn't my father, and he doesn't know anything about it. I was hoping Persephone knew more, but it's spring so she's topside right now. In summer and fall she stays at Olympus, but during spring she generally walks the earth."

"We'll come with you," Percy said. "You were planning to shadow-travel, weren't you? We can't use my mom's car because she's going to need it if we take longer than the weekend, but--"

"I can let you borrow the camp's SUV," Chiron said. "Both Percy and Annabeth have their driver's licenses, right?"

Nico grumbled for a little longer, but he was obviously too tired to put up much of a fight. Eventually it was decided that they would leave the next morning, giving Percy and Annabeth enough time to get the Prius back to Percy's mom. In the car with Annabeth, Percy found the silence uncomfortable.

"Are you okay with this?" he said. "I'm sorry I volunteered both of us without thinking. I can-"

"You think I would let Nico suffer because of petty jealousy?" Annabeth asked sharply. In the darkness intermittently interrupted by other cars' lights, her eyes shone dangerously. "Of course I want to help him, and this has nothing to do with you."

"No, I didn't mean--" Percy shut up, recognizing that at this moment nothing he might say would sound good.

He dropped Annabeth at her place and then went back home. It was close to midnight, but his mom had stayed up waiting for him. She made him hot chocolate and they settled in the kitchen, speaking in low voices so they wouldn't wake up Paul. 

"You're leaving, aren't you?" his mom said, sounding resigned. 

"Chiron's letting us borrow the camp's SUV," Percy said stupidly--this wasn't what concerned his mother. "I'm sorry, mom. I know I said I would take this year to focus on my studies and not risk my life for a while, but-I really have to go. It might not even be that dangerous."

He winced at his own words. _Oh, and now you've jinxed it._ His mother laughed ruefully, obviously thinking along the same lines.

"We'll see about that," she said. She sighed and wrapped her hands more tightly around her cup of hot cocoa. "I've told you before, you do what you think you have to do. I'd just like to know: are you facing anything powerful enough to, say, destroy the world?"

"No, nothing of that magnitude. But--just as important to me, in a way. You remember when I was cursed a couple of months ago?"

"Don't tell me it's--"

"No, it's no threat to me anymore." Percy explained to his mom what Nico had done. "So, you see, I have to help him. I haven't been a good friend to him, and now he's suffering because of _me_. I have to go."

"Of course, honey," his mom said, before she reached across the table to pat his hand. "Just be safe, all three of you."


	3. Chapter 3

Nico woke up crying, a shameful but not unusual occurrence these days. The dream had been about his mother's death, except that he hadn't watched it as a movie scene like the day he'd summoned his mother's spirit and learned the truth, but from his younger self's point of view, terrified and shocked and grief-stricken. It seemed that the curse had now gotten strong enough to dig into those of his memories that had been affected by Lethe. He wiped his cheeks but took his time calming down, since no one else was there to witness his meltdown. Cabin Thirteen only echoed with the sound of his own uneven breathing. 

Then he lied back down, with no intention of falling asleep again but wanting to give his body as much rest as he could for the upcoming journey. His stepmother wasn't going to be happy to see him--she never was--and Nico wasn't sure how he would be able to convince her to help him. With a little luck, maybe springtime would put her in a receptive mood. The perspective of not being alone for the trip was both a comfort, because he wasn't sure how much worse he was going to get, and a source of dread. Percy's stricken face the previous night was precisely why Nico hadn't wanted him to know; if Nico had no hope of anything but friendship with Percy, at least he wanted the friendship to be guilt-free. He didn't want Percy to feel responsible for him or like he owed him anything, as had happened after Bianca's death and after Percy's journey in Tartarus and his encounter with Bob. Unfortunately, this seemed to be the one constant in their ever-changing relationship. 

Sally Jackson dropped Percy and Annabeth at camp early in the morning. Percy must have told her what Nico had done, because she greeted him with even more warmth than usual. Her attitude painfully jogged the memory of his mother's death that he'd just dreamed about.

"How do you plan to find Lady Persephone?" Chiron asked Nico. They were standing at the edge of camp and the sky was gray with early morning light. 

"I stole a little something from her garden," Nico said, and took a wrinkled yellow carnation out of his pants' pocket. 

Had it been a normal flower, it would have been dead from being cut and stuffed into a pocket, but it came from the Underworld garden of the goddess of springtime herself, so Nico merely needed to smooth the petals a little for it to look like a freshly cut flower. He held it out and the flower's head turned west, like a sunflower looking for the sun. 

"I don't think she's very far, anyway," Nico said. "She's just gotten out of the Underworld, so she has enough of it left in her that I can sort of feel her."

"Well, good luck," Chiron said.

Argus handed to Percy the keys to the SUV with obvious reluctance in his many eyes. Sally Jackson gave Percy and Annabeth hugs and then hovered a little before giving Nico a hug too. Nico blinked and tried not to think about his mom. 

Percy got behind the wheel and Nico climbed shotgun so he could guide him with his tracking flower. The flower was a very hit-and-miss guiding tool, and it took a lot of focus for Nico to note the slight changes in the flower's pointing and then translate it into an actual route. They drove for hours, and the atmosphere in the car was very different from the last time they'd gone road-tripping together. There were no games, barely any conversation, and most of the time the only background sound was the radio softly drumming pop songs. 

After a while, Nico's tired brain started to wonder if there wasn't something he was unaware of going on. Percy looked tense and Annabeth was cool and closed off, as if something was bothering her but she didn't want it to show. Nico wondered if she was mad about being roped into going on this quest, or if maybe she and Percy had fought about something unrelated. It was hard imagining them having issues more serious than being temporarily annoyed with each other, but even the most harmonious couples had their rough patches, or so Nico had heard. 

"Hey, so," he said, wondering why in Tartarus he was the one who had to try for small talk. "How's school going? Did you pass the--what's it called--the SAP?"

Percy's mouth quirked into a smile. "The SAT. Yeah, we did. Annabeth scored great, of course." He smiled proudly at his girlfriend in the rearview mirror. "And I did passable, which I guess is the best I can hope for. Ow!"

Annabeth had slapped him over the head and she said, "Don't talk like this. You've worked hard."

"Don't hit the driver," Percy grumbled, but it sounded good-natured. Nico wondered if whatever problem those two had was related to school and the stress of university entrance. "Sorry we haven't really been, um, in contact much lately."

"You had a lot of school work, no?" It had actually been a relief not to have to hide the curse from Percy and Annabeth, especially as the dreams started to really bother him, but Nico didn't say it. "I didn't expect to see a lot of you before summer."

"Yeah, a lot of work, yeah. Have you ever thought about going back to school, Nico?"

"What, me?" Nico glanced at his flower. "Take the next turn left. What would I even do in school? I've done well learning everything I needed to know about our world by myself."

His learning experience of the demigod world and the mastery of his powers had been through either Minos' dubious tutelage or his own trial-and-error experiences--the shadow-traveling alone had taken him to some _very_ interesting places--but Nico liked to think he'd come out of it stronger. School couldn't have taught him how mad and dangerous the world really was. 

"But, I don't know, what about making a normal life for yourself? Don't you want to try it?"

Nico snorted. "A normal life? Really, Percy, what's even normal about me?"

"Just about as much as there is about me," Percy said. "Which is to say, not a lot, but that's not what I meant. You can't spend most of your time in the Underworld."

"The past few months, I've spent most of my time _out_ of it. But school--last time I've been to school was with Bianca."

That shut Percy up, and Nico only felt a little bad about it. Even then, the conversation seemed to have eased things a little between Percy and Annabeth and the next few hours were more relaxed. They'd briefly driven across Pennsylvania and were now getting deep into woodsy Ohio, with touches of green every now and then where new baby-green leaves were poking out. Nico could feel that his stepmother was close, but a headache had been growing behind his forehead the whole afternoon and he kept having to fight sleep.

"Hey, maybe we should start looking for a motel to stop," Percy suggested, glancing worriedly at him. 

"Persephone is close," Nico said stubbornly. "If we keep going we can be done with--"

Suddenly, he wasn't in the car anymore. Instead he was in a dark chamber, kneeling at the edge of a chasm so deep it looked like a scar of impenetrable darkness. About fifteen feet below Percy hung from a ledge, his face pale and strained, and even lower was Annabeth, almost swallowed already by the pit's darkness. Nico lied on his stomach, thrusting his hand out for Percy to take it.

_Nico? What--Whoa, whoa, whoa!_

Nico felt dizzy and weak, much too weak to hold Percy and Annabeth's combined weights even if Percy hadn't been so out of his reach. Still, he tried, because he couldn't think of anything else to do. His mind still swam with horrific visions from Tartarus, and the thought that Percy-- _Percy_ \--was heading there filled him with despair.

_Nico, can you hear me? Hey, Nico!_

Percy was calling for him. "The other side, Nico! We'll see you there. Understand?"

"But--" In his heart, Nico knew what Percy was about to do, but his head refused to believe it. 

"Lead them there!" Percy shouted. "Promise me!"

"I-I will."

Nico screamed for help but there was no time left. Percy and Annabeth vanished into the darkness, and part of Nico's heart tumbled down with them. 

_Nico! Nico!_ "Hey, Nico!"

Nico blinked and the dark pit disappeared. He was back in the car, the camp's white SUV, and Percy was leaning over him, looking alarmed.

"Nico!" he shouted in Nico's face, making him wince. "Are you back with us?"

"Yeah," Nico mumbled. His chest hurt from grief. Percy was right there, and yet Nico's brain was still so caught up in the nightmare that it didn't feel like it. "I'm fine, back off, please."

Percy leaned back into the driver's seat. "Styx, that was scary. Did it look like this from your end when it was happening to me?" he asked Annabeth. "Because in that case, I'm so sorry."

"You didn't ask to be cursed," Annabeth said. Nico saw her face in the rearview mirror and felt fresh guilt over letting her and Percy fall into Tartarus. "Nico, how are you feeling?"

"Fine," Nico repeated automatically. He refrained the silly urge to apologize to both of his friends, for the past and the present. "Where are we?"

Now that he felt less fuzzy, he could focus on what was outside the car. It was rather dark, but Nico realized it was because they were surrounded by trees, with the road at their back. Glancing through the windshield, he saw that the hood of the car looked dented and a tree loomed right in front of it.

"What happened?"

"Ah, uh, well." Percy grimaced. "Argus is going to kill me, isn't he? You kind of surprised me when you--anyway, I swerved out of the road and ran into that tree. I hope the engine isn't damaged."

He turned the key in the ignition. After a few tries, the engine coughed and then fell silent.

"Damn it," Percy said. "What're we gonna do? I don't remember seeing any motel for miles."

"There's a path right there," Annabeth said, looking through her window. "It has a mailbox, so there should be a house further down."

"Night's coming and we found a house in the woods," Percy said. "Right, 'cause nothing bad has ever come out of that set-up. We have such a good track record with hospitality."

"Do you have any better idea?" Annabeth asked. She paused meaningfully and Nico was sure that she was either pointing or looking at him. "Because I don't."

Nico wanted to protest, but the truth was that he felt pretty fried. He thought that Persephone was close, but he couldn't tell how close. It could be a few hours before they found her, and it was less than sure that she would provide them with accommodations.

"Okay, you have a point," Percy said. "Let's get out of here."

Nico opened the door on his side and stumbled out of the car, catching himself before he fell down. His legs were as strong as wet noodles and he felt faint, as if he was back to the state he'd been in after coming out of the jar. 

"Hey, hold on, let me help," Percy said, getting out of the car and jogging around it to reach Nico. 

It was degrading, but Nico didn't have much choice but to let him do it. He had to lean on Percy as they walked down the forest path with Annabeth, feeling the warmth of Percy's body seep through layers of clothing, Percy's strong arm wrapped around his shoulders, and trying not to be too flustered by all of it. As Annabeth had predicted, the path eventually led them to wooden gates held closed by chains with a heavy padlock. Behind them, they found a small timber house surrounded by oak trees. On the porch was a rocking chair, its wood a weather-worn grey. 

There was no bell to ring, so Percy cupped a hand around his mouth and called out, "Hellooo? Is anyone here? Hello?"

The front door opened a sliver and the cannon of a shotgun poked out.

"Oh, whoa!" Percy exclaimed, raising the hand that wasn't holding Nico. "We come in peace!"

"We had an accident," Annabeth said. "And our friend's sick. Can we please come in? Even just for a phone call?"

"I'm not _sick_ ," Nico hissed, but no one seemed to be paying him attention.

"I don't have a phone," a voice said from the inside. 

It was a woman's voice, strong and mature. After a few more seconds, a woman came out holding the shotgun. She was tall and well-built, her pepper-grey hair cut very short. She had a face that looked like it'd been carved with a knife out of a wooden block. 

"But I know a thing or two about cars," she said. "You said your friend's sick. What's wrong with him?"

"I'm just tired," Nico said.

"Nico, you look about to faint," Percy said. "I promise we mean no harm, ma'am."

She examined them for a long moment before she seemed to decide that they were harmless. She came to unlock the gate and let them into her garden. 

"You're about to fall over, boy," she told Nico, making it sound like it was a failure on his part. "It's getting late. It's probably best that you stay for the night, and I'll look at your car in the morning."

She turned her back to them and marched toward her house. Nico, Percy and Annabeth shared a look, silently asking each other what they should do. The woman realized that they weren't following her and she glanced at them severely over her shoulder. 

"Are you coming or what?" she asked peremptorily. 

"Yeah, we're coming," Percy said. "Please don't shoot."

That actually made the woman bark a short laugh. "You have a sense of humor, boy," she said. "I like that."

"Thanks, I guess?"

They followed the strange woman into the wooden house. 

\---

They entered a living room that had a rustic sort of charm. The walls and floor were made of wood panels, and most of the furniture was wooden. In front of the fireplace at the back of the room lay a rug that looked like a bear skin, and there was a stuffed deer head on the wall over the mantle. Percy had no doubt the woman had hunted the animals herself, probably with her bare hands. A fire was burning in the hearth and the room was pleasantly warm. A staircase ran along the left wall, leading to another floor. 

"Sit down," the woman ordered Nico, pointing to one of the chairs that surrounded the table in the middle of the room. She sounded like she was used to bossing people around, and Nico did as he was told with uncharacteristic docility. 

"Thank you so much for letting us in," Annabeth said, before introducing herself and then Percy and Nico. "We don't know what we would've done without you."

"My name's May," the woman said. "Aren't you a little young to be driving around on your own? Where are your parents?"

"Percy and I both have our driver's licenses," Annabeth said. She looked a little miffed at the 'young' comment, but she managed to maintain a polite face. "We were on a little road trip for spring break, but a deer ran out of the woods in front of the car and Percy got us off the road."

"Happens all the time," May commented. When she looked away, Percy stuck out his tongue at Annabeth, who rolled her eyes in return. "I made some stew and was about to eat my dinner," May said. "There should be enough for all of us."

"Thank you," Annabeth said. "You're very kind."

"Are you feeling nauseous, boy?" May asked Nico.

"No," Nico said.

"Good. You two, help me set the table," May ordered Percy and Annabeth.

"I can help too," Nico said, half rising from his seat.

"No, you stay put," Percy said. It scared him how fragile Nico looked. "You need to rest."

Nico eyed him with the air of someone contemplating murder, but Percy hoped that the presence of a stranger would deter him. Even exhausted, Nico was one of the most dangerous demigods Percy knew. May showed Annabeth and him where they could find plates, glasses and silverware from cupboards on the wall, while she got stew from an ancient-looking stove in the corner of the room.

The stew was warm and tasty, and Percy realized how hungry he was once he started eating. Nico, though, was poking at his food more than he was eating it. Percy remembered Jason telling him that Nico had been that way after his time in the jar.

"You don't like the food?" May asked Nico sternly.

"Oh, no. I mean, yes, I do," Nico said hurriedly and started eating for real. Percy was getting really fond of May.

"How long have you been living here?" Annabeth asked May. "It looks pretty isolated."

"For close to ten years. Since I retired from the army." Percy and Annabeth shared a look that said _oh, what a surprise._ "People get on my nerves. I like how quiet it is here."

Annabeth tried to make more small talk, but May obviously wasn't a conversationalist. Very quickly, Nico looked like he might fall asleep in his plate. 

"I'll be going to bed as soon as I've done the dishes," May told them. "I go to bed early and I rise early. I only have a sofa bed and my own bed to accommodate you. Annabeth will sleep with me, and the boys will share the sofa bed."

That woke up Nico. "What?" he said. "But--"

"Really, Percy and I can share," Annabeth protested. "Nico needs a real bed."

"Nonsense, the sofa bed is perfectly adequate. I will have no fornicating under my roof."

Annabeth's face turned beet-red. "Percy and I can abstain from… fornicating for one night," she said tightly. 

"I remember what being a teenager was like," May said. "This isn't proper and I won't have it."

There wasn't much they could do about it since she was generous enough to let them sleep here. Annabeth looked mortified and Nico looked nervous. Percy didn't even dare examine his own reaction. Sharing a bed with Nico? This was going to be a new sort of awkward, on Percy's side for sure and maybe on Nico's too. Percy and Annabeth helped May clean up and then Percy opened the sofa bed and made it with sheets and blankets, while Annabeth went back to the car for their bags.

"I'll be upstairs in my room," May told Annabeth once she was back. "Don't take too long saying goodnight."

Nico was already in the sofa bed and looked close to dozing off. Maybe it would be all right, Percy thought. If they were both tired and slept soundly, then there wouldn't be any time for things to get uncomfortable.

Annabeth and Percy kissed goodnight at the bottom of the staircase. "Goodnight," Percy murmured to her. "I'm guessing this woman sleeps with a gun under her pillow, so keep an eye open."

"I have my sword," Annabeth said. "Goodnight." 

She kissed him again, deeply, curling a possessive hand at the back of his neck and adding a little teeth to the kiss. He didn't mind her getting rough with him--he was kind of into it, to be honest--but it made him wonder about what she might be thinking.

"Nothing will happen," he murmured too softly for Nico to hear.

"I'm not worried you'll jump him as soon as I turn my back," Annabeth said, but she looked too unhappy to be completely truthful.

"May would shoot me if I did." The joke rang awkwardly and Percy winced on the inside. He pushed a strand of blond hair behind her ear and said, "Well, go get some rest. Talking with Persephone should be fun."

He watched her climb the wooden stairs and then went to join Nico, who was turning his back to him. It was hard to tell whether he was already asleep or not. The bed was narrow and the mattress dipped down in the middle, so that Percy had to be careful not let himself slide until he bumped into Nico. He followed Nico's example and turned on his side, facing the edge of the bed.

He closed his eyes, wishing for sleep to come and take him, but it was significantly earlier than his usual bed time. Even if he was tired from driving all day, his body seemed to rebel against the notion of going to sleep now. Instead he listened to the wind that made the trees rustle outside, the noises from nocturnal animals, the buzzing from May's fridge, and Nico's soft breathing. Very carefully, Percy rolled over so that he was on his other side, watching the indistinct outline of Nico's shoulders and head. His brain, which hated him, started to conjure up images and impressions of the waking dream he'd had of kissing Nico. The dream had been so vivid that the details had been etched in his mind like those of a true memory. Percy caught himself wondering what it would feel like to kiss Nico for real--what would be different from the dream and what would be similar. Would Nico be so decisive? Would his mouth taste the same? Would--Percy clenched a fist against his forehead, trying to physically stop this trail of thoughts from going further. Already he could feel a flicker of desire make his insides grow warm, and getting hard was pretty much the worst thing that could happen right now. 

_Gods, what's wrong with me?_

Separation hadn't made the attraction go away as he'd hoped it would. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, or so the saying goes, so maybe it hadn't been the best tactic. On the other hand, after only one day with Nico Percy itched to touch him so much that it had become an ache. Even discounting kissing him, which was pure fantasy, he wanted to simply reach out and touch Nico's shoulder, or his hair, and try to comfort him as he would if Annabeth were the one feeling poorly. 

A sound stopped his musings, a low, muffled moan that came from Nico. At first, Percy, who was still trying hard not to think about sex--which of course meant that all he could think about was sex--felt a sharp spark of lust at the sound, but he quickly realized that it was a moan of distress and not of--other things. Nico's shoulders trembled as though he were crying, then he shook his head violently, letting out an unarticulated cry. He was obviously having a nightmare and Percy wavered for a moment, uncertain what he should do. 

" _Bianca_ ," Nico whispered, his voice heartbreakingly small. 

_That_ killed any hint of arousal that Percy might have felt. He leaned over Nico and shook his shoulder, calling his name and hoping that it wouldn't freak out Nico to hear his voice given the state of their relationship after Bianca's death. After a few tries, Nico violently slapped his hand away and sat up like a shot, panting loudly. 

"Hey!" Percy scrambled away from him, raising both his hands in a placating gesture. "You were having a nightmare. It's okay."

Nico's breathing had the harsh quality of someone who was trying to keep sobs in check. He was trembling hard enough that Percy could feel it through the mattress. 

"Percy?" he asked after a moment, sounding unsure.

"Yeah, it's me," Percy said. He wanted to get closer again but restrained himself. Remembering how disoriented he'd felt after some of his nightmares, he went on, "We're at May's house--you remember, the woman with a shotgun? We were on our way to talk to your stepmother."

It took another long moment, but eventually Nico said, "Yeah, I remember."

"Are you all right? What am I saying, of course you're not all right. I remember what the nightmare are like. D'you wanna, like, talk about it?"

Nico let out a shaky laugh. "Not really, no. And stop sounding like that."

"Like what?"

"It's not your fault if I'm cursed."

"Well, it kind of is--"

"No!" Nico said so forcefully that it startled Percy. "It was _my_ decision. No one forced me to do it. So, stop--stop acting like you have to make up for something."

"Okay, okay." It wasn't _that_ easy to stop feeling guilty about Nico's situation, but Percy could pretend. "I get that it's not really my fault, but… You can't blame me for being upset that someone I--someone I care about is suffering. We're friends, aren't we?"

"Yeah," Nico said in an odd voice. "We're friends."

"As long as we're clear on that," Percy said, feeling like the worst liar. "Are you okay to go back to sleep?"

"I'm not sure. But you go back to sleep. Don't let me keep you up."

"I wasn't sleeping anyway."

Percy was even less likely to fall asleep now, but now that he'd established that he didn't know what to say. Nico hadn't lied back down but he was quiet, and Percy was afraid that anything he might do could set him off. They sat together in silence for a moment, and there was so little space in the bed that if one of them even so much as shifted positions he would certainly bump into the other. Percy pictured himself brushing against Nico's leg with his foot, making it look accidental. It was hard to resist the temptation. After a while, he found himself matching his breathing to Nico's or maybe Nico was matching himself to Percy, until Nico was breathing normally again. Despite the circumstances, this was maybe the most soothing moment they'd ever spent together. 

"This afternoon," Nico said, suddenly breaking the spell. "What did I do that startled you so much?"

"Oh. Well, you kind of jumped from your seat, holding your hand out. Yelling my name." Percy hesitated a moment before saying, "You were dreaming about me and Annabeth falling into Tartarus, weren't you? I guess it wasn't very fun from your end either, huh. Maybe I shouldn't have extracted that promise from you."

"I would've done it even if you hadn't asked. Someone had to. It-it was very brave of you to fall with Annabeth."

"I couldn't just let her face this alone!" Percy protested, but then he remembered that facing Tartarus alone was precisely what Nico had done. 

"Yeah," Nico said softly. "I know."

Percy wanted to say, _If it had been you hanging from my hand, I would've done the same,_ but felt like it was more raw honesty than either of them was able to handle at the moment. 

"Lie down and try to get some more sleep, okay?" he said. "If you have another nightmare, I'll be there to wake you up."

"You're not my keeper," Nico said, but the bite from his words was weakened by the fact that he then broke into a yawn. 

"Come on, don't be stubborn."

They both lied down and Percy found himself drifting to sleep. Soon enough, he was awaken once more by Nico's nightmares, and it was only the beginning of a very long night.

\---

True to her word, May got up early and Annabeth had to get up with her. She hadn't slept too badly-not too deeply either, because she didn't fully trust May not to be a monster in disguise-but she still felt a little punch-drunk from the early hour. When she got downstairs, she found the boys already awake and looking like they hadn't slept a wink.

"Bad night?" Annabeth asked Percy when he came to kiss her good morning. 

"Nico had nightmares," Percy explained tersely, glancing at Nico who was sitting on the edge of the still open sofa bed, his face buried in his hands. "A lot of them. It was pretty bad."

 _But I bet you enjoyed comforting him_. Annabeth crushed the thought as soon as it popped up, because it was very unfair to both boys. Annabeth hadn't had a lot of fun when she'd been in Percy's position, having to watch him bear the weight of this curse with little she could do to help. Still, it rankled to catch herself comparing her position when Percy was victim of the curse with Percy's position now and to acknowledge that it was similar. That thing with Nico was no fleeting attraction. At the breakfast table, where May served them a solid breakfast of eggs and bacon, Percy's attention was mostly on Nico, watching him worriedly and nagging him to eat. Nico looked like he was too exhausted to muster much annoyance, although he did mutter a few death threats. 

So, in return, Annabeth watched them and tried to sort out her thoughts and feelings. She was pretty sure that nothing had happened during the night, because if it had Percy's guilt would be too transparent for her to miss it. But it was equally obvious that Percy's feelings were only getting stronger and deeper. Annabeth looked at Nico, trying to figure out what about him was so irresistible to Percy. She liked Nico, even though sometimes she thought it would be easier for her if she could hate him, but she couldn't see him as boyfriend material. He was too young, too skinny and--she wasn't proud of it but there it was--too closely linked to the Underworld for her tastes. Then she tried to compare Nico to herself, since Percy was attracted to them both, but she couldn't find a lot of common points with the son of Hades. In the end, she gave up; Piper would probably tell her that she was wrong to try to rationalize feelings. Percy liked Nico, and this was the fact she had to work with. 

May worked on the car while they all took turns in her tiny bathroom. Halfway through the morning, she managed to get the SUV running again even though it was still very visibly dented. 

"I don't know how to thank you," Annabeth said to May as they were getting ready to leave. Even if the woman's attitude had irritated her sometimes-- _fornicating_ , what in Hades--she couldn't deny that they owed her a lot. "You've been very generous, and I'm sorry if we've disturbed your peace."

"We'll be more careful from then on," Percy said.

"I'll take the wheel," Annabeth said.

"Hey! It wasn't my--"

"Oh, get out of here, kids," May said gruffly. "I don't do well with goodbyes. They make me cry." Then she turned on her heels and strode down the path that led back to her house, disappearing inside the forest.

"Well," Percy said after they'd watched her leave in stunned silence. "I take it all back. Nothing bad happened. Good things _do_ happen at twilight in the forest."

"I wasn't joking about driving, though," Annabeth said, flicking her fingers at him to signal that she wanted the keys. 

Percy grumbled a little for good measure, but Annabeth thought he felt too tired to drive and was actually relieved not to do it. When they tried to get into the car, there was a brief argument between Percy and Nico about which of them would get to ride shotgun. 

"Nico, you should lie down in the backseat and try to rest," Percy said.

"I need to be in front to guide Annabeth with the tracking flower," Nico replied.

"Didn't you say that Persephone was close?"

"Close could mean anything between half-an-hour and a couple of hours. We're less likely to miss her if I use the flower." Nico lifted up his chin. "And what did I tell you last night? Stop coddling me because you're feeling guilty."

"It's not-" Percy flushed and looked away. "Okay, geez, you win this one. _I'_ ll take a nap in the backseat."

Annabeth glanced from one boy to the other, wondering what they'd talked about during their long, mostly sleepless night. At least, it seemed clear that Nico was oblivious to Percy's feelings, chalking Percy's behavior up to guilt. She wasn't sure whether to be glad for it or not. 

"All right," Annabeth told Nico as she got behind the wheel. "Lead us there."

They drove another hour with forest framing both sides of the road. Percy did fall asleep, and Nico always seemed to be on the verge of doing it too, but somehow managed to cling to consciousness and indicate to Annabeth where she had to turn. After a while it started to feel like they were the only ones on the road, which had become cracked and eaten away by grass. 

"Pull up here," Nico said so suddenly that Annabeth had to hit the brakes hard to be able to stop where he pointed. That brutally woke Percy up and he uttered a string of pretty colorful curses before leaning between the front seats.

"I'm guessing we're there," he grumbled. 

"You're cute when you're grouchy," Annabeth said, which made Nico snort in quiet amusement. 

"Oh, right, team up to mock me, very fair," Percy complained, but he sounded more affectionate than irritated. His tone made a lump spontaneously lodge itself in Annabeth's throat. 

"Persephone is out in those woods," Nico said. "I can feel her distinctively enough that I don't need the flower anymore."

He put the flower back into his pocket and got out of the car. Not waiting for Annabeth and Percy, he headed confidently into the forest.

"So," Percy said once they had caught up with him. "How do you plan to present this to your stepmother?"

"I'll just ask her if she can tell who's powering the curse that's on me. She should be able to feel the energy the way I can."

"I thought she didn't like you very much," Annabeth said. "Do you think she'll just give you the answer, or is she likely to make things difficult?"

Nico stopped walking, but didn't turn toward them. "The latter," he said. "If she asks me to do something in exchange for the information, I can't force you two--"

"Nico!" Percy protested. "You can't think that we'll--"

"Don't be silly," Annabeth said. "I didn't mean that we'd abandon you if things got rough. I just wanted to know what to expect."

"All right," Nico said. "Thanks."

Nico seemed to know where he was going, but it would be a lie to say that Annabeth didn't get worried as they went deeper into the forest. There were man-made paths, but the mess of brambles that threatened to swallow them showed that not many people ventured here. It was a nice spring day nonetheless, and rays of sunlight filtered through the still mostly leafless canopy. It wasn't too chilly and birds were chirping from every direction. Nico made a tight turn that got them down a path so narrow it barely deserved the name. He stopped again, taking a deep breath. "Here we go," he said.

They emerged into a large clearing that looked like it came straight from a fairy tale. The tall grass was strewn with small wild flowers and sunlight made it shine like gold. Most of the trees already had leaves, although they were a soft pastel green. Annabeth thought that Grover would like the place. At the center of the clearing a woman walked barefoot among the flowers. She had long wavy dark hair that floated behind her as if she were standing in front of an electric fan, with lilies woven into it. She wore a multicolor dress whose flower pattern shifted as she moved, and as she walked through the grass more flowers bloomed in her wake. She was surrounded by a few wood nymphs who danced and capered around her. Some of the nymphs saw Annabeth and the boys, and they started giggling and whispering to each other. 

Squaring his shoulders, Nico marched toward the goddess with Annabeth and Percy on his heels. At first, it looked like Persephone wasn't aware of their presence, but when they got close enough for speech she turned to them and said, "Ah, there you are."

She had warm brown eyes but her face was deathly pale, betraying her as the Queen of the Underworld. She looked them over for a long moment, as if she needed to think to remember their names.

"Percy Jackson," she said. "The young hero. With his girlfriend Annabeth Chase, daughter of Athena. I love what you did with Olympus, dear."

"Thank you," Annabeth said.

"And you," Persephone said, her eyes finally resting on Nico. "How is it that I can't seem to escape you, even when I'm enjoying the world of the living?"

"I have a right to enjoy the world of the living as much as you do," Nico said dryly. "I came to ask something of you."

"If you want me to rid you of that horrid curse," Persephone said, twirling her finger at the space around Nico's head, "then I'm afraid that I'm feeling neither inclined, nor able to do it."

"I wouldn't presume that much," Nico said. "I just have a question. Once you've answered it I'll leave, and I swear never to disturb your spring time again."

"Ask away."

"Can you tell who's powering the curse? Which divinity or spirit of the Underworld?"

"Oh, yes. That's easy."

There was a long pause. "Well?" Nico said, a little more impatiently than was prudent. "Who is it?"

"Now that's a second question, isn't it?" Persephone said, smiling slyly. "I could tell you, but I want you to do something for me in return."

"Because of course you do," Percy muttered, but not low enough that the goddess couldn't hear him.

"Well, Percy Jackson," she said, "you don't have to take part to this little quest if you don't want to. But you won't refuse it, will you? You will go through with it for the same reason you accepted to look for the sword of Hades when I asked you."

Percy glared at her, but said nothing. Annabeth knew the story of how Percy, Nico and Thalia had been asked by Persephone to look for the sword of Hades--whose existence Hades himself had not been aware of at the time--after it'd been stolen by Ethan Nakamura. Even then, she wasn't sure what the goddess meant, but Percy obviously understood her fine. 

"What do you want?" Nico asked. "Need us to find some trinket again?"

"Actually, yes, I do. You've heard of Orpheus, of course?"

"Of course," Annabeth said. 

"Marvelous lyre player. He gave my husband and I the most delightful concert that time he went to the Underworld looking for his wife. Poor Orpheus, if only he hadn't been so impatient... Anyway, I got him to give up his lyre to me as a souvenir. No one can play it as well as Orpheus himself, but the object is dear to my heart."

"Let me guess," Percy said. "It got stolen, you want us to find it, yadda yadda, rinse and repeat. You know, you really need to update your security system."

"You're quicker than your reputation gives you credit for," Persephone said. "Indeed, the lyre has been stolen. It would never have happened if _some_ people had been more careful with it, and not so taken with handsome demigods." The goddess turned to scowl at the group of nymphs, who squealed and scattered. "Whatever the circumstances, the lyre's missing and I want it back."

"Has it been gone for long? How are we supposed to find it?" Nico asked. "You'll understand that I'm not at my best right now."

"Don't worry, I'm going to give you the tool for your quest," Persephone said. She snapped her fingers and one of the nymphs brought her a bird.

"Is that a parrot?" Percy asked incredulously.

"Parrots are one of Persephone's sacred animals," Annabeth explained to him.

"He's a rose-ringed parakeet," Persephone said proudly, stroking the bird's head with the tip of her finger. He had green feathers with a black ring around the neck, and a flaming red beak. "His name is Cocytus."

"The River of Lamentation," Nico said. "Charming."

" _Cocytus_!" the parrot screeched. "Named of lamentation loud heard on the rueful stream!"

"That's from Milton's _Paradise Lost_ ," Annabeth said, surprised.

"It's the only thing he can say," Persephone said, and she sounded somewhere between embarrassed and annoyed. "My lord Hades thinks it's funny. But what's important is that this bird is drawn to things from the Underworld. The lyre has spent enough time there to be marked, and it hasn't been stolen for long so it must still be close. Follow Cocytus and he'll lead you to the lyre."

"If it's that easy, then why not do it yourself?" Percy asked.

The goddess blinked at him in total incomprehension. "Now, why would I do that? So, do you accept my conditions or not? Find the lyre, and I'll tell you who is powering the curse."

Nico shot a questioning look at Annabeth and Percy, and when they nodded he said to Persephone, "We'll do it."

The goddess of spring spread out her arm, and Cocytus flew at Nico and perched on his shoulder. He then contentedly started nipping at his hair, making it even messier than usual. 

"Travel well, young heroes," Persephone said, before dismissing them with a wave of her hand. 

They went back to the car with Nico cursing at the bird the whole time, trying to make him stop playing with his hair.

"Animals generally hate me," he said. "This bird must be crazy."

"Maybe he's mistaking your hair for a bird's nest," Percy said. "Or he's looking for worms."

"Haha, Percy, very funny," Nico said acidly. "Gods, Cocytus, stop it!"

"Cocytus! Named of lamentation loud heard on the rueful stream!"

Annabeth offered a prayer to the gods that they would get their hands on the lyre very soon, before she needed to hurt either the bird or the boys. 

\---

Nico was dreaming. He knew that for a fact, because the shimmering form of his sister Bianca's ghost floated in front of him, and he hadn't seen her since she'd shown up when he was trying to summon their mother's spirit for answers. He would never see her again, actually, now that she'd chosen reincarnation. 

"You seem to be doing well for yourself, little brother," she said.

Something about her tone bothered Nico, but he couldn't put his finger on it. He was too happy to see her, even if he knew it was only a dream. Dreams were the only place where they could still meet. 

"Yeah," he said, swallowing to get the lump in his throat to pass. "I'm--well, right now I'm not having the best of times, but generally speaking things are looking up. I miss you, though."

Instead of smiling, Bianca frowned and said, "Do you, really?"

"What?" Nico said, taken aback. 

"I don't know, I see that you didn't waste time replacing me with a new sister as soon as you knew you couldn't get me back."

"You mean Hazel? But that's not-"

"Not the same thing? Of course it's not. She's barely your sister, being born from Father's Roman aspect. But you were so desperate to replace me that you had to make do with what you had."

Stunned, Nico couldn't speak for a moment. He knew this was a dream, and not even one based on an old memory, but he couldn't make himself snap out of it as he usually would. The curse seemed to have destroyed every amount of control he had on his dreams. Knowing this wasn't real didn't make Bianca's words sting any less; Nico looked at his sister, shocked, his mouth open on words that wouldn't come. 

"This is not--," he finally stammered. "You're wrong about Hazel. She _is_ my sister. I'm her brother. We're family, but it's not _instead_ of you--"

"Don't fool yourself, Nico. Why do you think she bothers with you? You're needy." Bianca had never spoken to him so harshly, or looked at him with that sort of snide half-smile. "She can't get rid of you and she has no other family except for Father--and we all know how much the gods are worth as parents. This is exactly why I left you for the Hunters. Those were people who wanted me but didn't _need_ me."

It wouldn't have hurt half as much if she'd hit him. This wasn't real, but because Bianca had never said those words didn't mean she'd never thought them. She _had_ left him for the Hunters, after all. Her ghost was still wearing her Hunter clothes--they, not Nico, were Bianca's family before she died. 

"Hazel--" Nico said, trying to think past the hurt, "this isn't the same with her. I don't--"

"This is your pattern, baby brother. You cling to people whether they want it or not. Look at you, pining for Percy Jackson for years! As if he'd ever want you back."

Nico felt his eyes well up with tears and he wiped them angrily. "Shut up, Bianca," he hissed. "You left me. You don't have a right to tell me what to do anymore. You _abandoned_ me! Like-like I'd never mattered at all."

"Maybe you didn't."

Nico's heart stopped. "You can't mean-"

"Can't I?" Bianca's smile was pure cold contempt. "Actions speak louder than words, Nico. When Lady Artemis offered me to be part of the Hunters, it was the happiest I'd ever been."

"No, no." Nico closed his eyes, shaking his head. "This is all a dream. You're not here. This isn't you."

"Finally I was free of my hyper, snot-nosed little brother," Bianca went on, her tone savage. Nico covered his ears with his hands but he could still hear her. "Or so I thought. But it turned out that not even death could keep you away. So I took the only way out I had. Only Lethe could wash you off of me. How many people can claim that they've driven their loved ones to that point? Huh, Nico?"

Nico woke up gasping for breath, as if all the oxygen around him had been sucked away. Bianca's cruel voice still echoed in his ears. He doubled over from pain in his middle, barely aware of his surroundings. 

"Nico? What's going on? Annabeth, pull over!"

Nico felt the car--oh, that's right, they were in the car--grind into a screeching halt. The car door on his side flew open and he heard Percy, close to him all of a sudden, talk to him in a soothing voice, "Hey, hey, it's all right, just breathe." Then louder, probably to Annabeth, "I think he's having a panic attack or something."

 _Is it what this is?_ Nico thought dimly. He'd never had one before. He just couldn't breathe and his lungs felt like they'd magically shrunk; it seemed silly to think that it was all in his head. He'd shut his eyes but he could feel that Percy was very close, almost whispering to his ear. 

"Nico, look at me, okay? Just look at me, please." 

Nico forced his eyes open, and through a veil of tears could see Percy's blurry concerned face. _Look at you, pining for Percy Jackson for years!_ He felt a surge of the old anger come back, at Percy and at himself.

"Leave me-alone," he whizzed, and weakly tried to push Percy away.

"Nico, let me help," Percy said, grabbing Nico's wrist before his hand could connect. "You just have to look at me and breathe with me. Just do it, okay? Then you can hit me all you want. Breathe in, and out. You can do this. In, out."

Now Nico was angry that Percy was patronizing him about the simple act of _breathing_ , so he pinned him with a glare as he took a trembling breath and then let it out. Percy returned his look and raised an eyebrow in challenge, then took another breath, gesturing for Nico to imitate him. After a while it seemed to be working; the pain in Nico's chest eased and it wasn't as difficult to take in air. Nico knew he was feeling better when he became aware that Percy was still holding his wrist, keeping a thumb on his pulse point.

"I'm fine, now," he said tightly, blood rushing to his face. "You can let me go."

Percy let him go. He was crouched on the ground outside the car, looking up at Nico with his brow furrowed. Cocytus was perched on top of the open door, and when Nico looked in his direction he yelled, "Named of lamentation loud!", which was maybe his way of offering support. 

"Are you feeling well enough to continue?" Nico startled; he'd almost forgotten about Annabeth in the driver seat. 

"Yeah," he mumbled, sitting straighter. He'd rarely felt so humiliated in his life. 

"Good thing my driving skills are better than Percy's," Annabeth commented with false cheer. 

"Sorry," Nico said. 

"Don't be," Annabeth said, surprisingly gently. "We're going to end this curse. You'll see."

After this fun interlude they went back on the road, following Cocytus who was flying ahead of them. The bird flew with intent, and all they could do was to hope that there weren't too many items from the Underworld sitting around in Ohio. None of the other drivers they met on the way seemed to wonder what a parrot was doing here, but maybe it was yet another trick from the Mist. Nico kept his eyes on the bright green spot that was Cocytus in the air, trying to ignore the way Percy and Annabeth kept glancing at him. He was sure that they were both dying to ask him what that had been about, but to their credit they kept it to themselves. 

_Why do you think she bothers with you?_

_As if he'd ever want you back._

_Only Lethe could wash you off of me._

Nico clenched his fists, letting his fingernails dig into the palms of his hands. The temperature in the car had dropped significantly and Annabeth and Percy were squirming in discomfort. Nico forced himself to take a deep breath, trying to calm down further before he caused another accident. This was just a dream; he shouldn't let it affect him that much. Whatever its precise wording, the curse was tailored to torture its victim. It was poking at his weak points and insecurities. Nico told himself that Bianca had loved him, no matter how her actions had looked to him at the time. Hazel loved him too. Percy… Well, that was a whole different can of worms, but they were forging a tentative friendship bond and Nico didn't want to do anything to mess it up. 

They'd mostly left the forest behind and were driving into a vast expanse of fields, miles and miles of dark brown earth and green grass, with a chain of mountains cut out against the cloudy sky. The last sign they'd driven past told them they were about a dozen miles from Alliance, but they were finding themselves once again almost alone, with Cocytus leading them out of the main road and to increasingly narrower paths. 

"Who do you think stole the lyre from Persephone?" Percy asked from the backseat. "That's a pretty stupid move. Gods don't take lightly to being stolen from."

"Persephone seemed to think the thief was a demigod," Annabeth said. 

"Yeah, a demigod should know better--Hey, where's that bird going?"

Cocytus was flying away from the road and across the fields. Annabeth had to park the car on the side of the road so they could run after the bird. 

"Gods damn that parrot!" Percy swore, running ahead. "Hey, Cocytus, slow down!"

They kept running, screaming after the bird. It was only when Nico himself called after him that the bird deigned to slow down, maybe acknowledging a power from the Underworld. They found a dirt path weaving between the fields and it made running easier. Then, skirting around a patch of woods, they came upon a big, colorful building that looked completely out of place. 

"Is that--" Nico started.

"A _funhouse_?" Percy finished for him. 

It was actually written 'Fun House' on a neon sign over the entrance, so that was a safe bet. It was a colonial-style two-story building with a rectangular façade and a steep, pointed roof. The central door, topped by the neon sign, was shaped like the open mouth of a clown, and the façade was painted with bright yellow, red and green. Cocytus flew right into the clown's mouth. Nico could hear faint music escape from the entrance, and despite knowing that this house was very bad news he found himself almost _wanting_ to go in. He'd only been at the fair once, years ago. With Bianca.

"Okay," he said, drawing out his sword. "Let's do this."

Percy and Annabeth followed him, similarly armed. The first hallway had spinning wheels on the floor, which they avoided easily. They could hear the bouncing echoes of Cocytus' cries, " _Cocytus-tus-tus-rueful stream-eam-eam-_ ". It was hard to tell how far ahead the damn bird was. The next hallway was almost completely pitch dark except for glowing arrows painted on the walls, and the music seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. 

"Why would the thief even come in here?" Percy whispered nervously. "This smells like a trap, big time."

"But a trap for who?" Annabeth whispered back. "This is the middle of nowhere. Besides, it's not like we have a choice. Persephone told us to follow Cocytus."

Guilt made Nico's mouth taste bitter. If this was a trap and he'd led his friends into it…"You guys can wait out-"

Percy gave him a shove, cutting him off in the middle of his sentence. "Don't be an idiot, Nico," he said. "Let's find that stupid bird together."

Nico felt his eyes prickle with tears. His recent dream and general tiredness made him feel raw, his emotions brimming too close to the surface. It was exasperating. His fingers, almost against his will, started fiddling with his skull ring--Bianca's gift. He forced himself to stop and gripped his sword tighter, then walked further down the hallway, deeper into the house.

Sections of the floor undulated up and down, tipped from side to side or moved forward and back. Nothing dangerous, especially when one had explored the Labyrinth, but it was annoying and it slowed them down. Following the echoes of Cocytus, they had to crawl through a horizontal cylinder, to finally end up in a maze of distorting mirrors. It was still very dark, but the mirrors glowing frames gave away just enough light for them to be able to see their reflections.

"Ugh, I hate those," Percy said, grimacing at a reflection of himself stretched thin like chewing gum. "So creepy."

"I can't hear Cocytus anymore," Annabeth said. "Can you?"

Nico listened out, but the only thing he could hear was the music that never seemed to get any louder or fainter, no matter how long they walked. To make the matter worse, the hallway was branching into a few different paths. In a normal funhouse they would probably all lead to the same exit, but there was little chance that this place was normal. Nico walked a little further, glancing right and left, and saw something on the floor a few feet from him. When he got closer he saw that it was a green feather. 

"What is it?" Annabeth asked over his shoulder. 

Nico showed her the feather. "At least we know he went that way."

Nico and Annabeth advanced into the hallway. Somewhere behind them Percy called, "Hey, where did you guys go?"

Simultaneously, Nico stepped over something that yielded under his weight; but it wasn't just a section of shifting floor, this time. As Nico fell into the darkness, his only thought was, "Well, _shit_."

\---

The fall was long enough for Annabeth to worry about the landing. She was surprised when she didn't hit hard ground, but was swallowed into a mass of light objects. She flailed, trying to swim back to the surface, where she could get some air. Light spheres rolled over her face--balls? Was she in a ball pit? Eventually she managed to get her head out of the pool of balls and her feet found solid ground. Standing, she had balls up to her neck, so she could breathe but it made moving around difficult. Wherever she was, it was completely dark and she couldn't see a thing. She didn't even know how big the room was. Somewhere on her left she heard a string of muffled curses and the swishing sound of the plastic balls being moved about.

"Nico?" she called. "Nico, is that you?"

"Annabeth? Yeah, it's me. Percy?"

Percy didn't answer, which meant that he hadn't fallen with them. He must have stayed behind. This was a good thing, because maybe he could get them out of here.

"Percy!" Annabeth called louder. "Percy, we're down here!"

She listened for a moment and thought she could hear something that sounded to her like Percy's voice, but she couldn't make out what he was saying. She called again, but after a while she couldn't hear anything anymore. Even the eerie music had stopped, or maybe it couldn't reach them where they were. 

"Could you shadow-travel us out of here?" Annabeth asked Nico.

Nico was silent for a long moment. "I'm really tired," he said. "And I-I'm still not completely recovered from last year. At this point, I'm starting to think that I've permanently crippled myself or something. Will is optimistic and says I only need time, but--Anyway, I could probably get myself away, but then I would pass out and we don't know what's awaiting us in this house. And I don't know if I could transport you; not safely, at least."

He spoke in a low, shameful voice, as if he thought himself at fault for not being able to get them out. Annabeth plowed through the balls in his general direction, holding her hands in front of her until they bumped into a body. 

"It's me," she said when she felt him tense. She found his shoulder and squeezed it. "Let's try to find out just how big this room is."

Their voices didn't echo in a way that felt like they were in a big space, but when they looked for walls and followed them, they quickly realize just how small it really was. They couldn't find any outlines for doors or windows, at least not by touch alone, and the walls felt solid with no hollow space behind them. Eventually they both settled in a corner of the room, their backs against the walls for maximum safety. 

"What should we do now?" Nico asked. "Is it me or is it getting hot in here?"

His voice was oddly tight, and it took a moment for Annabeth to realize that he was breathing a little too loudly, as if he'd just run a few miles. 

"Are you okay?"

"Of course," Nico replied quickly, but he sounded defensive. 

Did he have another dream while they were looking for an exit, without Annabeth realizing it? That didn't seem likely. He was maybe still shaken from the dream he'd had in the car. Or maybe--

"Oh," she said, coming to a realization. "This place. It's narrow, and dark, and we can't get out--"

"Annabeth," Nico said in a warning tone.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to--I'm sorry."

Nico had spent days in a jar, not even a year ago. It made sense that he would have trouble with narrow dark spaces and being trapped. Annabeth could still hear him breathing in a tightly controlled way that showed he was trying very hard to keep it together. She bit her lip, wondering what she should do. He was obviously embarrassed about it and she didn't want to make him feel worse, but she couldn't ignore him while he struggled next to her either.

"What can I do to help?" she asked. 

"Don't know. Not much." He took a long breath. "I lost my sword. What about you?"

"I did too. They must be at the bottom of the pit."

"Let's look for them. I need something to do."

Apparently, Nico didn't mind plunging into a pool of plastic balls if it meant he had something to do. It took a while, but they managed to get both of their swords back. With her drakon bone sword in hand, Annabeth immediately felt better about her situation. It was totally irrational, of course, because they were no closer to finding a way out of that ball pit. 

"Percy must be looking for us," she said, trying to keep Nico distracted. "Hopefully there's another entrance to this place than the one we fell through."

"Yeah," Nico said. His shoulder brushed against her and she could feel him shake minutely. 

"I don't think I ever thanked you for what you did for Percy. I--" She had been focused on other issues, but she wasn't ready to tell Nico about that part. "It was incredibly brave. You're a good friend."

Nico laughed shakily. "A good friend. You wouldn't say that if--" He cut himself off.

"If what?" The beginning of a bad feeling curled inside her stomach. "What do you mean?"

"I guess I should tell you," Nico said with a sigh. "I don't want to make the same mistakes I did before. I should tell Percy too, I'm just afraid that--All right. You know how I said I was over Percy?"

"Yeah."

"I wasn't lying, if that's what you're thinking. Or if I was, then it was only to myself. I'm not over him, though. I still love him. I realized that when I saw him cursed and I just had to do something about it."

"You love Percy," Annabeth repeated numbly. 

"But don't worry, I know I don't stand a chance," Nico added hurriedly. "I'm not about to cause problems between you and him. Taking on that curse wasn't about--seducing him or something. I didn't even want him to know. Thinking that I could make him like me--like me the way I like him--that part I'm really over. Percy's straight. Even if he wasn't, it's obvious that you and he belong together."

Nico obviously thought he was reassuring her, but with each word he said the dread inside Annabeth grew stronger. She was thankful for the darkness that meant that he couldn't see her face. She should have figured out that Nico still had feelings for Percy, but she'd been too fixated on Percy's side of the equation. What would Percy do, if he knew that his own feelings weren't unrequited? Would he still be so certain that he wanted to stay with her?

"Annabeth?" Nico said, sounding worried. "Shit, I shouldn't have said anything. I don't want to mess things up between us too."

"No, no, it's fine. I was just surprised." She should tell him about Percy, but she couldn't force the words out. 

"Is something wrong? I kind of have the feeling that something's wrong."

"No!"

"You're not mad at me, are you?"

Was she mad at Nico? Annabeth looked into herself and found that she couldn't muster any bad feelings against him. He was being candid with her, which she knew didn't come easily to him. In a way, she couldn't help but feel a certain kinship with him. How could she hate someone who felt so deeply about Percy? She knew what it was like. Although he probably wasn't aware of it, Percy had a way of pulling you into his whirlpool. Neither her nor Nico could help themselves. 

"I'm not mad," she said firmly. "We're friends, Nico. This doesn't change anything."

"Okay, good," Nico said, although his tone betrayed uncertainty. "Now, what do we do? The sooner we can get out of here, the better I'll feel."

"Maybe there's a hidden mechanism somewhere," Annabeth hazarded, happy to change the subject. "If we could find a crack in the wall, maybe we could use our swords as levers."

"Yeah, why n--"

Nico was interrupted by a loud bang somewhere above their heads. Before Annabeth had the time to finish her thought of _what now?_ Percy's muffled voice followed a second bang, "Annabeth, Nico? Can you hear me?"

"Percy?" Annabeth moved off the wall and cupped her hands around her mouth to shout, "We're here! We're down here!"

"Annabeth? Hey, I found you!" Faintly in the background, Annabeth could hear Cocytus cry out his own name. "If you're behind that door, move away. I'm gonna--"

There was another loud bang, presumably Percy throwing himself against the door.

"Percy!" Annabeth yelled. "Stop it! Percy, stop!" The banging stopped, and Annabeth hurried to warn him, "There's nothing behind the door! Nico and I are lower. Be careful not to fall as you break it."

"Okay!"

The banging resumed, but it sounded different and Annabeth surmised that Percy was now hitting the door with his foot. Eventually, the door yielded under the repeated assault and light burst out in the ball pit. Annabeth squinted and saw Percy silhouetted inside a rectangle of light a little higher on the wall.

"Hey!" Percy lied down on his stomach and stuck his head through the opening. "Are you guys all right? Wow, is this a ball pit?"

"Get us out of here!" Annabeth said.

Percy thrusted his hand down and Annabeth extended her arm to try and reach him, but there were still a good few inches between their fingers. 

Nico tapped Annabeth's shoulder and told her, "I'll help you get up. Come on, I'll give you a boost."

"But what about you? How do we get you out?"

"I'll shadow-travel in the hallway next to Percy."

"I thought--"

"It's a very short jump. I'll be fine if I just have to get myself out."

Annabeth didn't like it, but she didn't have any better idea so she nodded at him. With Nico's help, she was able to get a grip on Percy's hand and he hauled her up. Once she was safely out, Percy hooked an arm around her neck and kissed her forehead.

"You hurt?" When she shook her head, he asked, "How should we get Nico out?"

Annabeth glanced down inside the ball pit, just in time to see Nico dissolve into the shadows. A split second later he reappeared in the hallway next to them and immediately listed to the side, blinking rapidly as if he were clinging to consciousness. 

"Oh, whoa." Percy grabbed him by the shoulders to keep him from falling. For a moment, he looked like he wanted to greet Nico the way he had Annabeth, but instead he propped him against the wall and asked softly, "Are you okay?"

Nico frowned as if he had trouble focusing, before his eyes finally rested on Percy. "I'm fine," he said in the same tone.

The boys looked at each other for a few more seconds only, but it felt longer to Annabeth. Maybe it was because she knew their respective secrets, but she felt between them a longing so thick it was a wonder neither of them seemed to recognize it for what it was. Her stomach churned with shame that she couldn't make herself tell them the truth. She was a coward, that was all. She was too scared of losing Percy to do it. Cocytus, fluttering over their heads, lost patience and started shrieking, "Lamentation loud, lamentation loud!" Percy pushed away from Nico to yell at the bird to shut up.

"I don't think that there's any hope left that we made a discreet entrance," Nico mumbled, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Annabeth stepped closer to him and murmured, "Feeling better?"

Nico glanced at her. "Yeah, fine. We should go--we've wasted enough time."

"Cocytus helped me find you," Percy explained. His hands were twitching at his sides and Annabeth would bet he was dying to touch Nico. "I think he could sense you, Nico, since you, well."

"Since I'm something from the Underworld," Nico said, arching an eyebrow.

"Not a _thing_. But okay, the point stands."

"Cocytus," Nico said sternly to the bird. "You find the lyre now. It _has_ to be somewhere in that house."

As if he'd understood the order, Cocytus batted his wings and dashed forward, forcing them to run so they wouldn't lose him again. It was a perilous run, because the hallway sometimes turned at odd angles and the floor wasn't always reliable--at one point they narrowly missed falling into another pit--but they managed not to twist an ankle or run into a wall before they passed a doorway and emerged into a large room. 

"What the--" said Percy. 

The room was larger and higher than any space they'd seen in the house so far, and it was filled with--stuff. All sorts of stuff. There were pieces of furniture, clocks, paintings--some in their frames and some with just the canvas rolled--weapons old and new, dummies, clothes, musical instruments, statues. A large stegosaurus skeleton occupied the center of the room. Chandeliers and miniature planes hung from the ceiling. Everything had been thrown together haphazardly and there was only a narrow alley in the middle to be able to walk across the room. The music was louder here, but it was still hard to tell where exactly it came from.

"More stuff than Grover could eat in one day," Percy said, and Annabeth huffed a laugh.

Cocytus flew over the chaos of objects and perched himself on something. It was hard to make out in the room's dim lighting, but it looked very much like a lyre. Annabeth started trying to make her way to it, when a squeaking voice stopped her in her tracks.

"What're you kids doing here?"

Standing in the doorway was an old woman wearing a dress that looked like a potato sack, wild strands of hair escaping from her loose bun. She held a cane made of some dark wood and was shaking it at them. 

"The Funhouse isn't open today! Shoo!"

"Uh," Percy said, "we could enter just fine. The door wasn't closed or anything."

The woman glared at him, one hand on her hip. "If I wanted people to come in, would have I put the house somewhere so isolated? Huh?"

"I guess not?"

The old woman stomped toward them and then stopped, examining them with black beady eyes.

"Demigods!" she spat with contempt. "Always poking their noses where they don't belong."

"You've had problems with demigods recently?" Annabeth asked, thinking of the demigod who'd stolen the lyre.

"There was a boy, a day or two ago." She narrowed her eyes. "Friend of yours?"

"No!" they all exclaimed in unison. 

"We're sorry for trespassing," Annabeth said. She made a show of sweeping a glance over the room. "You have an impressive collection."

The woman's sour expression softened at the compliment, which confirmed Annabeth's idea: she was a goddess, and gods were nothing if not susceptible to flattery.

"People like to give me things," the woman said coyly.

"They give them to you? Just like that?" Annabeth said, thinking of the lyre; maybe the demigod who'd stolen it hadn't known its exact worth, but given that he'd taken it from a goddess, it seemed weird that he would just give it up to a strange woman in a funhouse. 

"They exchange it for another object in my collection." The woman waved a hand at the jumble of objects. "I offer them a fair bargain. I have many, valuable things. Are you interested in something? Look there." She plunged into the mess and came back with two round pieces of metal that, after examination, looked like shields. "This is Aegis, Zeus' shield, and this one is the shield that Achilles used in his fight against Hector. If you have something of equal or superior value, I can give you both for the price of one."

"Can I have a closer look?" Annabeth asked.

"You know what they say about Aegis, don't you, child?" the old woman asked, looking at Annabeth as though wondering if she was stupid.

"I know. I still want to look."

The woman let her approach, and Annabeth got a good look at the supposed Aegis. There was the head of a woman with snakes instead of hair on it, and Annabeth could tell from experience that it was a good likeness of Medusa. But Thalia owned a copy of Aegis, a gift from her father, and Annabeth had seen it often enough that she knew this one was a fake. She turned to Percy and shook her head minutely. 

"I know who you are," she told the woman. "You're Apate."

"You know me?" the woman said, her eyes wide with surprise. 

Her appearance was changing as they talked, her hair darkening and her face getting smoother, until a young, dark-headed woman stood before them instead of an old crone. Annabeth saw Percy shoot Nico a questioning look, mouthing _who's that?_

"She's the goddess of fraud and deception," Nico explained. "She was set free when Pandora opened the pithos."

Apate's shock at being recognized was turning into satisfaction. "You've heard of me, then. I'm surprised. Most mortals don't know me, and yet they make such a frequent use of deception. They don't know what they owe me. But you might not be quite as stupid as the rest."

"Oh yeah," Percy said with a superb imitation of confidence. "I mean, I needed a moment--I'm not good with names--but I've totally heard of you. Goddess of deception, man. It has a ring to it. Big fan. But I guess it means that everything in here is fake."

Annabeth was afraid that the goddess would get angry at Percy's insolence--she loved him, but sometimes he really should try to hold his tongue--but Apate smiled slyly. 

"Oh no," she said. "Some of it is fake." She threw the two shields as if they were junk. "But I have some truly powerful pieces. Are you sure you don't want to barter? You might get lucky."

Annabeth and Percy shared a look. They still needed to get the lyre back to Persephone, and the fact that Cocytus hadn't moved from his perch seemed to indicate that he'd found what they'd come here for. 

"Why not?" Annabeth said, trying to look unconcerned. Rule one of bargaining: never let the opposing party know how much you want something. "Can I have a look around?"

"Please, help yourself. There's so much to see that it could take you days."

They didn't have days, but Annabeth tried to make it look like she was taking her time and not aiming too obviously for the lyre. She found old parchments with various types of writing, which did look intriguing, tarnished jewelry, cases that held old bones and an astounding collection of broad-brimmed feathered hats. A wooden horse taken from a carousel was lying in the arms of a stone angel, the kind that could be found in graveyards. When she came near Cocytus, who was indeed perched on a lyre, the bird called a screeching, "Lamentation loud heard on a rueful stream!" as if irritated that she was taking so much time getting the lyre. 

"This is nice," she said to Apate. It _was_ nice, golden and engraved with laurel leaves; just the type of object that would be a gift from Apollo. "Can I take it? I collect old musical instruments."

"You can take it if I like what you have to offer in exchange," Apate said. 

And _that_ was where Annabeth's plan hit a roadblock. She didn't have anything on herself but her clothes, her drakon bone sword and her Camp Half-Blood necklace. The boys weren't better fitted--when they'd followed Cocytus, they'd barely had the time to grab their weapons. 

"Well?" Apate said, tapping her foot. "What do you have for me?"

Would Apate care for her sword? It depended on whether she knew the nature of the lyre, really. It wasn't like Annabeth had anything else to offer, so she opened her mouth to make her suggestion, but was interrupted by Percy stepping up to the goddess.

"I have this," he said, taking from his pocket Riptide-as-a-pen. He uncapped it and the bronze blade materialized in his hand. "Interested?"

"Percy," Nico said. "You can't--"

Percy ignored him. "This is Anaklusmos," he told Apate. "Hercules' sword. Want to hold it?"

"Ooh, can I?" Percy held out the sword to her and she examined the blade closely. "It matches the description I've heard of Anaklusmos. And it turns back into a pen?"

"Yeah," Percy said, handing her the cap. "Just cap it, like you would a pen."

Apate tried it and let out a little squeal of delight when the sword became a pen again. Annabeth watched Percy, but his face didn't betray anything. She noticed he'd never said he was giving up the sword, but she wasn't sure it would be enough for what he was trying to do. Nico thought so too, because he came to Percy's elbow and they had a brief whispered argument.

"So, can my girlfriend take the lyre?" Percy asked, dismissing Nico by turning his back to him. 

Apate was entranced with Riptide, which she'd turned into a sword again, and she didn't answer.

"You know," Percy said, "my buddy Jason--he's a son of Jupiter--he has this project where he's trying to make sure all the min--all the _ignored_ gods are honored, by having shrines and stuff built to them. I could put in a word for you."

Apate looked up from the sword, a gleam of interest in her dark eyes. "A shrine," she said musingly. "Having a shrine would be right and proper."

"More mortals would know of you," Annabeth said. "I think it would be a good thing. As you said, we owe you a lot."

"A good thing indeed." Apate capped Riptide and slipped it into a fold of her dress. "All right, take the lyre. I can't play, anyway, and people are rarely interested in musical instruments."

Annabeth shooed Cocytus away and took the lyre, and they made their exit as quickly as they could without looking like they were running away. When they came out of the funhouse, it was late afternoon and the sun was starting to go down. They must have been there for hours, even though it had felt much shorter. Annabeth glanced over her shoulder and saw that the house had vanished.

"Do you think this is really Orpheus' lyre?" Percy asked.

"Cocytus seemed to think so," Annabeth said. Cocytus was back on Nico's shoulder and playing with Nico's hair. "Let's get back to the car. We want to get away from here as fast as we can."

It was only once they were back in the car and on the road that Percy checked his pockets. When his hand came back with his Riptide pen, his shoulders sagged in relief.

"That was risky, though," Nico said reproachfully. "What if the simple act of giving it to her meant that she was the owner now? What if she had some magic that stopped Riptide from coming back to you?"

"I thought of that," Percy said. In the rearview mirror, Annabeth could see that he was staring at Nico's profile. "Would've been worth it anyway, as long as it gave us a chance at helping you."

Nico glanced up to look at Percy in the mirror, but Percy had turned his head away and was looking through the window. Red spots bloomed on Nico's pale cheeks and he bowed his head, clasping the lyre on his lap while Cocytus curled against his neck. 

Annabeth was able to get them back to the clearing where they'd found Persephone earlier, and thankfully the goddess was still there. She was picking up flowers, which was a Sisyphus-like task since more flowers kept growing wherever she walked, but maybe Persephone enjoyed endless flower picking, or she thought that she had to replace the flowers she was taking. Annabeth was sure that she had felt them coming, but the goddess took her time smoothing her dress and arranging the flowers in her arms before she stood up and turned to them. Cocytus flew over to her, happily quoting Milton and perching on her shoulder.

"Is that Orpheus' lyre?" Persephone asked, looking at the instrument in Nico's hands. "Show it to me."

Nico handed out the lyre to one of the frolicking nymphs, who passed it over to the goddess. For the few seconds that the exchange lasted, Annabeth's heart threatened to climb in her throat. What if they had the wrong lyre? They'd have a hard time finding Apate again, and an even harder one bargaining with her again after she realized Percy had tricked her with Riptide. Persephone examined the lyre and Annabeth held her breath. Then the goddess strummed a few strings with a finger and the sound went straight to Annabeth's heart. She thought of losing Percy, of trapping him in a relationship he didn't want anymore, of him ceasing to love her. She thought of him and Nico, who looked at one another like it hurt. 

When Persephone smiled it was like watching the sun rise over a valley, its light streaming down. "This is the lyre," she said. "Of course, Orpheus made it sound a thousand times better."

Annabeth wiped her wet cheeks. The boys both looked a little misty-eyed too. If Orpheus could really play the lyre a thousand times better, then it must have been a literal heartbreak to hear him. No wonder it was said that he could make trees sob. 

"Thanks for the concert, I guess," Percy said. "But you said you would tell us about the curse if we got the lyre back for you."

"Patience, my young hero," Persephone said serenely. "There's always time to enjoy music."

Percy clenched his fists, opening his mouth to retort, but Annabeth stopped him with a touch to his wrist. "Don't blow it," she murmured. "Nico needs this."

"You asked me if I could tell who was powering the curse," Persephone said. "It's actually someone you've met before, Percy Jackson: Melinoe, my daughter."

"Your daughter?" Percy said. "I didn't know--"

"Ask Nico to tell you the story, one day," Persephone said, before she bent down and resumed picking flowers as though they weren't there. 

"Let's go," Annabeth said, pulling Percy by the elbow before he could get angry at the goddess. "Percy, let's go."

"Melinoe," Nico said as they were hiking back to the car across the woods. "I guess I can see why she wouldn't want to break the curse even if she was aware it had been passed onto me."

Annabeth knew that Percy and Nico had faced Melinoe when they were looking for the sword of Hades. From what Percy had told her, the goddess had been dissatisfied with Hades' rule of the Underworld and had been ready to back up Kronos. It would be hard to convince her to help them.

"We'll find a way," Percy said, obviously nagged by the same thoughts. "We'll convince her or, or we'll _make_ her. I don't care how, but she _is_ going to break that curse."

"We'll figure out something," Annabeth said soothingly, worried about how worked up Percy was getting. "I think we should get some rest, and--" She caught sight of Nico's blank face. "Nico?"

Nico had stopped walking and was now staring into space, while the grass at his feet wilted and died. Percy waved a hand in front of his face, but Nico didn't react to him.

"Hades," Percy swore. "I hate this. Nico? Hey, Nico, buddy, you have to wake up."

Percy and Annabeth reached out for Nico at the same moment, each of them aiming for a shoulder. When Annabeth made contact she felt herself get pulled, and a second later the forest around her had completely changed. 

It was very dark all of a sudden. Annabeth immediately recognized their surroundings--they were in Tartarus, but it looked even worse than in her memory. What was _wrong_ with the sky? The ground didn't look like a ground anymore but like a blistering, festering skin--which was what it was, Annabeth realized, the dark god's own skin. She didn't know where to put her feet, disgust and horror threatening to overwhelm her. Percy was at her side, his breath coming out in short pants, looking as close to panic as Annabeth felt.

"Percy?" she said, hating how high-pitched she sounded. _Please, I don't want to be there, please, not again._

"We're in Nico's dream," Percy said, his voice strangled. "This is-this is how _he_ saw Tartarus. The real face of the pit."

Annabeth looked for Nico and found him a little further, standing with his Stygian sword and surrounded by a crowd of giants, Cyclops, ghouls and other horrors. Annabeth recognized Polybotes with his reptilian legs and the basilisks in his green hair, and for a moment she forgot that it was all a dream and thought the giant would start yelling for Percy at any moment. She grabbed Percy's hand and clutched it tightly.

"Look what we have here!" Polybotes said in a booming voice. "Did you get lost, son of Hades? Where's Alcyoneus? He'll want to be there for this."

Nico looked very small, facing Gaia's army on his own, but he was standing straight, gripping his sword with both hands.

"Nico!" Percy screamed. "Nico, wake up!"

Annabeth joined him and they both shouted for Nico to wake up, but he didn't seem to hear them. Holding hands in a crushing grip, frozen in horror, they had to watch him get overwhelmed by the army in a matter of minutes. He tried his hardest to fight, summoning shadows darker than the heart of midnight, swinging his sword with wild desperation, but it was obvious to Annabeth that he stood no chance. It was only when Polybotes plucked an unconscious Nico from the putrefying ground that the image of Tartarus flickered. Annabeth blinked--

\--and found herself face-to-face with a group of very surprised Roman soldiers.


	4. Chapter 4

Percy wasn't aware of the Roman soldiers immediately. Once they were pulled out of Nico's dream, the only thing he could see was Nico's eyes roll back into his head and he lurched forward to catch him in his arms; Nico was out cold, and no amount of calling and shaking could rouse him.

"Stand down! We're not enemies!" 

Annabeth's voice called Percy back to his surroundings. He saw her drop her sword and raise her hands, and then he saw the kids in Roman soldier get-up and the swords they pointed at Percy and the others. The flat ground around them was creviced with craters and trenches, and the grass was cropped very short. Behind the soldiers, Percy could see a couple of forts in the process of being built.

"We're in the Field of Mars," Percy realized. "Nico took us to Camp Jupiter."

If Nico had used shadow-travel to take the three of them that far, then it wasn't surprising that he was unconscious now. Still, Percy didn't like how corpse-like he was, not moving, not--

"Is that Percy?" a voice said. A tall guy with curly black hair separated from the group of soldiers. 

"Dakota!" Percy exclaimed with relief. "I'm sorry, man, I think Nico accidentally transported us here. He's--he's not waking up."

Nico was slumped against Percy's side and Percy could feel how cold he was. Worriedly, he brushed the hair off Nico's face and watched him more closely. Nico's skin was so pale that it was almost translucent. Struck by a sudden presentiment, Percy tried to listen for Nico's breathing. 

"Annabeth," he said, his heart in his throat. "I think he's not breathing."

"What? Let me check."

Percy passed Nico over to Annabeth, still supporting half of his weight, and watched her pale as she put a hand under his nose, then pressed an ear against his chest.

"I can't hear his heart beat either," she said.

"Uh, guys?" Dakota said. The Roman soldiers around him were getting agitated. "What's going on? Should I get Hazel? She's right over there, supervising the building effort."

"Get Hazel," Percy said faintly. "Quickly."

He lived through the next minutes in a daze. Dakota went to get Hazel, who expressed surprise at their sudden arrival and then worry and panic when she realized how serious Nico's condition was. Percy took Nico in a fireman carry and they headed to the camp's infirmary, and on the way Annabeth caught Hazel up to the latest events. Meanwhile, Percy couldn't do much more than walk, try not to jostle Nico too much and keep his panic at bay. If Nico died because of a curse he'd suffered for _Percy_ 's sake, Percy would--He didn't know what he would do. Something ill-advised, probably. Why had Nico done it, anyway? Percy was supposed to be the one who did stupid things for his friends! And he was starting to rethink how not so bad this fatal flaw of his was, because it felt really shitty to be on the receiving end of that sort of sacrifice. He really would rather be under the curse's hold again.

The camp's infirmary was a long room with two rows of iron-framed beds, each bed separated from its neighbors by curtains. In the general spirit of Camp Jupiter, the décor was severe and the opposite of comfy. There was no one else in any of the beds, so Percy dropped Nico onto the first bed that he could see. Hazel barked at one of her subordinates to go fetch one of Apollo's kids, since they were the best at healing, and she sent Dakota back to the Fifth Cohort to supervise the fort building. While they waited, she took her turn at examining her brother. She pressed a hand against his cheek and closed her eyes, sitting very still for a long moment. Percy watched her expectantly, barely breathing.

Hazel gasped and opened her eyes, which were filled with tears. "Oh, Nico," she said plaintively. 

"What?" Percy said, stepping closer, past Annabeth. "What is it? Do you know what's wrong with him? He's not--"

Hazel shook her head. "He's still alive." Percy got so dizzy with relief that he had to lean against the bed. "Sort of. He's in a death trance."

"Death trance?" That sounded horribly familiar. "Like when he was in the jar?"

"Yes." Hazel sniffed, trying to compose herself. "That's what he's dreaming about right now--his time in the jar."

"We just watched him dream about when he was captured by Gaia's minions," Annabeth said. "We got out of the dream, but he didn't."

"Wait a minute." Percy sat down on the edge of Nico's bed, struggling to take it all in. "I get that he's still dreaming, but why is his dream affecting him physically now? And doesn't he need pomegranate seeds for the death trance?"

"I think the curse is working like a snare," Hazel said. She reached out and combed her fingers through Nico's hair. "The more you resist it, the worse it gets. Nico thought it would be easier for him to handle the curse than for you, Percy, but this is now backfiring on him."

"That idiot," Percy murmured, watching Nico's deathly pale face. Nico's ankle was inches from Percy's fingers and he itched to curl a hand over it.

"As for the pomegranate seeds, Nico does indeed need them if he wants to make it through the day."

"How long can he hold on?" Percy asked.

"I don't know," Hazel said, shaking her head miserably. "Less than 24 hours for sure. I-I had a dream, a few months ago. I dreamed of Nico in the jar. I should have--"

"There's absolutely no way you could've known this would happen," Annabeth told her, putting a hand on her shoulder. "No one could have known."

The door to the infirmary opened and Reyna and Frank entered, both dressed in the purple capes that marked them as praetors. They were tailed by a bright-eyed twelve-year-old girl with blond pigtails.

"This is Laura, daughter of Apollo," Reyna said, but her eyes were on Nico's still form. "Tell me what happened while Laura examine Nico."

Percy and Annabeth took turns at telling Reyna and Frank the whole story and then Hazel repeated her conclusions. Frank put an arm around Hazel's shoulders, trying to comfort his girlfriend; Reyna, stone-faced, invited all of them to discuss what they should do at the Principia while Laura did what she could to help Nico. 

The Principia hadn't changed much since Percy had last been there: same polished marble floor, same mosaic of Romulus, Remus and Lupa on the ceiling. The only difference was that the golden eagle standard was back on the display at the center of the room. Aurum and Argentum, Reyna's automaton guard dogs, were prowling menacingly across the room, maybe sensing their mistress' tension. Reyna and Frank sat behind the central desk in their high-back chairs. Percy, Annabeth and Hazel remained standing, not because the praetors were rude and didn't invite them to sit, but because there were no other chairs. You weren't meant to lounge in the Principia.

"What are our options?" Reyna asked.

"We know who's giving the curse its power," Percy said. "If we can find Melinoe and convince her to break it--"

"Are you sure you could find Melinoe's cave again?" Annabeth asked. "I guess we could try to use the DOA entrance again, but the Underworld is huge and we don't have the time to get lost."

"I--" Percy wanted to say yes, but it was years ago and he'd been following Nico's lead at the time. "Hazel, can you help?"

"I--yes, probably." Hazel bit her lower lip, looking torn. "I don't know the Underworld as well as Nico--I kind of kept to the Fields of Asphodel when I was there. But I could try."

"But, Hazel," Franck said, "if you go to the Underworld, are you sure you'll even be able to leave?"

"I don't know--"

"Then it's better if you don't come," Percy said. "I don't want to have to tell Nico that we saved him at the cost of your life."

"I have another idea," Annabeth said, wearing the frown she had when she was elaborating a plan. Percy's heart leaped to her--his smart girlfriend, of course she had a plan. "This is mostly groundless assumptions, but I've been thinking about who might have put that curse on you, Percy. This started after we came back from the Cretan Bull quest, right?"

"Right."

"Why at that moment? The war with Gaia ended months ago, and you'd been keeping it to yourself since then. But there was this girl, at the motel where we stopped as we were heading back to camp."

"The gloomy clerk girl?"

"Yes, her. I don't know, this is a long shot, but I had a weird feeling about that girl, and the timing matches. If we could--Hazel, could you shadow-travel us to Indiana?"

"That's a bit far," Hazel said. "I've practiced, though, so it should be fine. I think."

"You ended up in the Pacific Ocean last month," Frank said, frowning worriedly. 

Hazel glared at him. "I wasn't focusing properly! It was only that one time."

"We had all sorts of surprises when Nico used shadow-travel last summer," Reyna said. "I could lend you a pegasus or two for the trip. It would be safer."

"It would still take us hours longer than if we used shadow-travel," Annabeth said.

Everyone looked at Percy and he realized that, as the one who had yet to give his opinion on the matter, he now found himself in the position of having the last word. He wanted to scream; he knew that shadow-travel could be hazardous even at the best of times, and that if Hazel misfired it could be dangerous for all of them. But the clock was ticking and even the minutes that they were spending discussing this were minutes that Nico didn't have to waste. Percy usually enjoyed riding pegasi, but he wasn't sure he could stand the hours it would take them to go to Indiana without going crazy.

"Let's try shadow-travel," he said. "We don't have much time. _Nico_ doesn't have much time."

Hazel nodded forcefully and Annabeth seemed approving too. Franck looked troubled, and Percy couldn't blame the guy since they were risking his girlfriend with their half-assed plan. But Frank wouldn't say anything because he knew how protective Hazel was of her brother--they'd all had the occasion to experience it before--and that she wouldn't thank him for putting her life before Nico's. Reyna was unreadable, but if she were strongly against their idea she would have no problem arguing the point over with them. 

"Very well," said Reyna, weaving her fingers together on the desk. "While you're gone, we'll do our best to look after Nico. He's reacted well to unicorn draught in the past, maybe that'll help him now." Her eyes got lost for a moment, as if she were reminiscing about something. "I hope you're right, Annabeth."

"I hope so too," Annabeth said grimly.

After that, the group scattered. Hazel wanted to change before going and Frank went with her, presumably to say goodbyes. Annabeth stayed to talk with Reyna, and Percy wandered through the camp and back to the infirmary, where Nico was lying pale and still in the white bed. Laura had left; Percy didn't know whether she'd done something to Nico, but if she had it didn't have any obvious effect. Percy sat down by the bed and tried to gather his thoughts.

The situation was a familiar one. Nico had been dying last year too, when the giants had used him as bait to draw Percy and the rest of the seven to Rome. Somehow, though, it felt quite different. At the time, Percy had still been sorting through his freshly recovered memories and they'd left him uncertain of how he should feel about Nico. It wasn't until the very last moment, when Gregory Peck Tiberinus had told him that they didn't have as much time as they thought to save Nico, that Percy had started to feel the same sort of panic that was digging its claws into his heart right now. Only now, it was even worse; it was like the time he'd seen Annabeth be dragged into the chasm that led into Tartarus and known that he had to save her or let himself be pulled with her--and yes, he was fully aware of what it meant that he felt that way. It meant that he was so very, very screwed. Aphrodite had told him once that he'd have an interesting love life; if by 'interesting' she'd meant 'you'll feel you're in a hole so deep that you can't even tell up from down anymore," then she'd been perfectly right.

He was alone in the infirmary--alone with what was essentially Nico's corpse. His heart was too full, and if he wanted a clear head for what they might face--which possibly included being teleported into a volcano, according to Nico--then he needed to spill a little of his emotions, one way or another. He extended a hand, feeling self-conscious, and smoothed Nico's hair the way he'd seen Hazel do earlier, tenderly. The hair felt soft and Percy simply couldn't stop petting it. He was still doing it when the door opened. And because according to Aphrodite's predictions Percy's love life was destined to be a mess, the person who entered was of course Annabeth. Percy pulled his hand back to himself, but he was obviously too late. Annabeth's face didn't betray much, but Percy knew her well enough to know that she'd seen him and that she was trying to process the information. 

"Sorry," he said. He felt an urge to justify himself, but he would only be insulting Annabeth's intelligence. This was _exactly_ what it looked like.

Annabeth's grey eyes looked like clouds rolling in a stormy sky. The gods obviously hated him, so Cupid chose that time to strike Percy with one of those heart-wrenching moments of realizing just how beautiful she was. None of the goddesses he'd met looked as gorgeous as she did, and he was going to lose her.

"You're really in love with him," Annabeth said, her voice unexpectedly gentle. 

Percy opened his mouth, wanting to deny it, but it would be foolish to try. He'd just compared Nico to Annabeth in his mind only a moment before, and he was certainly in love with Annabeth. That made him a moron who'd managed to fall for two different people and would probably lose them both in the end.

"I'm sorry," he said stupidly. "I--" He hung his head low. "Yeah, I guess I am. I have no idea how that happened."

Annabeth walked up to the end of Nico's bed. "This isn't the sort of thing you plan. I didn't plan falling for _you_."

Percy chuckled miserably. "No, you wouldn't have. I still love you too, for what it's worth. So much." 

"I know."

"If you still want me, I'll stop seeing Nico entirely. For--for years. Or forever, if I can't get over him." As he spoke, his chest hurt so much that he thought this might be what having a heart attack felt like, but he forced himself to push through. "I'll confess to him--I don't want him to think that there's anything wrong with _him_ \--and he'll understand why I can't--why I--"

He hadn't been looking at Annabeth but had been staring at a spot on Nico's white sheet, so he was caught by surprise when she suddenly said, "Nico still has feelings for you."

Percy looked up. "What?"

"Nico loves you. He told me when we were in the ball pit."

"But he said--"

"I know, and he said he'd meant it at the time. He didn't know his own heart until he saw you with the curse."

"Oh."

That reveal made Percy feel about as dense as a bag of rocks. He looked at Nico's unconscious face, but it didn't hold any more answer than when Nico was awake. Percy hadn't seen this coming, but then he hadn't seen it coming the first time either. Nico had a way of being in love with him that was hard to tell apart from mildly fond tolerance. Although, to be fair, the fact that he'd shouldered on a nasty curse for Percy's sake should have been a massive clue. Then Percy looked at Annabeth and her expression broke his heart. She was exactly in the same position as he was, but he understood it only now: she was waiting to hear if _he_ wanted to break up with _her_. Nico being in love with him wasn't good news, because it meant that Percy had to make a real choice. He was going to have to break Annabeth's heart or Nico's; there was just no way around it. 

"This doesn't change anything," he said.

Annabeth sucked in a breath. "Percy, you don't have to--"

"No, listen to me: if you want me, you have me. Everything we've built, everything we've been through together, it still means something. If I have to make a choice, then I choose _you_."

Annabeth looked like she was going to cry, but she pressed her lips in a grim, determined line and Percy could actually see her push her feelings down. 

"We don't have to make any big decision now," she said. "Right now, saving Nico is more important."

"You're right," he said, rising to his feet. "Nothing else matters until Nico's safe."

Annabeth turned on her heels and left the room. About to follow her, Percy stopped to have one last look at Nico.

"Don't make plans to meet your father just yet," he whispered fiercely to Nico's silent form. "You self-sacrificing dumbass. You won't have time to redecorate your room in Hades' palace because I'm _not_ letting you die."

On a sudden impulse, he took Nico's hand and kissed his icy cold fingers. His cheeks burning, he jogged to catch up with Annabeth. 

\---

Hazel's shadow-travel transported them to the middle of nowhere. Hazel blinked and brought a hand to her forehead, looking dizzy. Annabeth and Percy, who'd been holding her hands, immediately steadied her on both sides. 

"Did we make it?" Hazel asked dazedly. "Did I take you to the right place?"

They'd given her as many details as they could about the place, but the fact that Hazel had never been there still made the trip more uncertain. Annabeth looked around; it was getting dark, but she could see that they were on the side of the road. In front of them were woody hills, and at their backs vast expanses of fields sprawled away from them. There were no obvious landmarks, no road sign that she could see. They could be in any random spot in Indiana, or even in another state.

"Let's head down that way," she said, since the motel they were looking for had been in a wooded area.

They had to allow Hazel a moment before she was all right to walk and then they followed the road in tense silence. If they couldn't find the motel, or if Annabeth had been wrong about the girl, then they'd have wasted precious time and Nico might die as a result of it. As she walked, Annabeth's mind kept flashing to what had happened in the infirmary a moment before: Percy gently stroking Nico's hair, the look of abject misery on his face as he told her he would cut off contact with Nico. She maybe should have been angry about it, but mostly she hated that this was causing him so much pain. She was tired of being heartsick, and of Percy and Nico being the same. Was it possible to work out a solution that didn't hurt anyone?

 _I choose_ you.

Annabeth glanced at Percy, or rather at his back since he marched ahead of her, fast enough that it almost counted as running. With her shorter legs, Hazel had trouble keeping up but she wasn't complaining. A few stars were already gleaming in the twilight sky, and the overall quiet made Annabeth feel like they could keep walking forever and never meet another soul. 

"Are you sure that--" Hazel asked tentatively. 

"We need to keep walking," Annabeth said.

They didn't need to walk forever, but for about twenty minutes. Then the road wound into the woodsy area and the darkness got so thick that it was hard to see where they were stepping, but after a turn Annabeth caught sight of a glowing sign that said 'Border Motel'. The crushing weight on her chest eased a little. 

"That's it! This is the place," she said.

"The serial killer's lair," Percy said gloomily.

The motel was a one-story building with a slanted roof that stood in the middle of a simple stretch of bare land on the side of the road, surrounded by trees. A couple of cars were parked in front of it. There couldn't be more than ten rooms, and the sign was the only thing giving off light in the area, except for the lit-up window next to the main entrance. 

"What should we do?" Hazel whispered, as if they could be heard from inside the building.

"We confront her," Percy said. "If she had offensive powers, she wouldn't have resorted to that sort of curse."

Annabeth didn't like his tone, but he was right that they didn't have time for anything elaborated. They didn't even know whether the girl would be working at the motel tonight, and if she wasn't then it would be hard to find her. They were in bad need of a healthy dose of luck. 

They entered the motel's hallway, and behind the counter was the long-haired girl from before. She looked to the entrance when they made the doorbell jingle, and her face froze in an expression of shock.

"Surprised to see me?" Percy said coldly.

The girl narrowed her eyes. "Do I know you?" she said, but she sounded too aggressive to be genuine.

There was a door right behind her with the word 'office' written on it, and she started inching toward it but Percy dashed across the hallway and jumped over the counter, all in one fluid motion. He'd gotten Riptide out and turned it into a sword so fast that it looked like the blade had just popped into his hand. The girl stiffened, her eyes fixed warily on Percy.

Annabeth walked up to the counter while Hazel planted herself by the front door. "You put a curse on Percy, didn't you?" she asked. Now that she was closer she could see that the girl had a name tag that she hadn't been wearing last time. "Sarah. Did you do it?"

Sarah put up her chin. "What if I did? Obviously he's bearing it pretty well. Percy Jackson, the gods' golden boy. I should've known."

So she had indeed been targeting Percy specifically--her voice as she said his name was dripping with contempt. Percy's eyes narrowed with fury and he brought the blade of his sword to Sarah's neck.

"I'm doing well because someone else has taken on the curse!" he bit out.

"Making your friends pay the tab for you, Percy?" Sarah's slate-grey eyes were cold as ice. "What a hero."

For a moment, Annabeth really thought that Percy was going to kill Sarah. He clenched his jaw, the muscles in his sword arm bulged, but he locked himself in place and the sword only pressed a little harder against Sarah's throat. He was breathing heavily from how hard he tried to contain his anger.

"Why did you do it?" Annabeth asked. Percy shot her a look that screamed, _We don't have time for this!_ but if they wanted to talk Sarah into breaking the curse then they needed to understand her better. "What do you have against Percy? He doesn't know you."

When Sarah answered the question, she was talking to Percy. "The only time I saw you was on the battle field in New York. You wouldn't have noticed me."

"You were fighting on Kronos' side," Annabeth realized. "Who's your god parent?"

"Phobetor," Sally said.

"God of nightmares." _Oh._

"When I saw you before Christmas, I thought you might be after me. So when the woman suggested--Well, I thought the curse would keep you busy, and also that you had it coming. Kronos was my only chance at a world where I would _matter_ a little."

"Camp Half-Blood has changed a lot since the Titans War," Annabeth said. "We've had new cabins built for children of non-Olympian divinities. We have children of Hecate, Nemesis, Hypnos and others. If you wanted to, Camp Half-Blood would welcome you."

Annabeth saw Sarah's cold mask waver for a moment, but it passed quickly and then her face hardened even further. "I don't care about Camp Half-Blood or other demigods. I just want to be left alone. So either kill me, or go away."

"Not before you break that curse," Percy said. " _I_ was your target, but the curse isn't affecting me anymore. You're losing nothing by breaking it."

Sarah's expression turned shrewd. "But it's affecting someone you care about, isn't it? Then it's fine by me."

"My brother's dying!" Hazel exclaimed, stepping forward with a hard glimmer in her golden eyes. "Is that what you wanted? Was the curse meant to kill?"

Again, Sarah lost control of her features and Annabeth saw surprise flash across her face. She decided to press on and said, "You wanted to incapacitate, not to kill. But this is what the curse's doing right now. Our friend Nico's dying and he doesn't have much time left."

Sarah's expression shifted and Annabeth understood too late that she'd made a mistake. "Nico, as in Nico di Angelo, son of Hades? He's the boy who was with you last time, isn't he? I recognized him too. Him convincing his father to fight is what turned the tide in the battle against us. I don't care what happens to him."

"We're not going to give you a choice," Percy said dangerously. His blade was going to leave a mark on Sarah's pale neck. "You'll break that curse, or I'll--"

"Or what, you'll kill me?" Sarah's eyes blazed in challenge. "Go ahead, I won't defend myself. I don't have any special powers besides making people around me uncomfortable, and I know I can't take you in a fight. I've seen you use that sword."

"Percy," Annabeth called. Percy's face was a stone mask and she genuinely didn't know what he would do. She didn't think he would kill Sarah, but he was definitely ready to hurt her. "Percy, calm down and let's talk about this. There must be another way."

"I have an idea, actually," Hazel said. "You said the curse tablet is generally buried in a fresh grave, didn't you? I can feel a graveyard a little further away. Maybe it's there. And I could feel the curse on Nico, so maybe I'll be able to find the tablet too."

Annabeth crossed her arms, thinking over Hazel's suggestion. If they went to look for the tablet then they needed to leave someone here to watch Sarah. Seeing how close to snapping Percy was, she knew she had to get him away from Sarah before he did something he would regret. Since Tartarus, Percy's anger often had a darker edge to it, and at the moment he was too caught up in the mess of his feelings over Nico and the current situation--guilt, fear, love and frustrated desire--to think right at all. 

"All right," she said. "It's worth a shot. Percy, you should go with Hazel. I'll keep an eye on Sarah."

Percy looked about to protest, but then his eyes fell on where his sword met Sarah's neck. He moved Riptide away from her in one sharp movement, as if he had to forcibly tear himself away.

"Be careful," he said tersely to Annabeth.

He and Hazel left, and Annabeth found herself alone with Sarah. She could see the girl assess her, wondering if she could get past Annabeth's guard. Annabeth moved toward her, drawing out her sword but in an unhurried manner that couldn't be taken as an aggression, and she put the hand holding the sword down on the counter.

"You have your boyfriend well trained," Sarah said. 

Annabeth lifted an eyebrow. "You know who I am?"

"No idea," Sarah replied, but it was said with such provocation that Annabeth wasn't sure she was being truthful. "It just seemed obvious to me that you were dating. You have him by the balls."

"Percy knew it was better that he didn't stay here. For him, and for you."

"Is he always this violent? I thought he was supposed to be one of the good guys."

"No one is at their best when someone they love is dying."

Sarah flinched almost imperceptibly, and Annabeth had once again the feeling that she wasn't totally at ease with the idea that her curse was killing someone.

"Well, why don't you ask the gods for help? You boyfriend is a son of Poseidon, right? If the gods are such a force of good, then they shouldn't let that sort of things happen."

Annabeth studied her, thinking carefully on how she should formulate her answer. Sarah's fists were clenched and red spots blotched her pale cheeks. She didn't appear to be thinking about running away anymore, but rather to want to see how Annabeth would answer her question. 

"The gods, very frankly," Annabeth said, "are a bunch of dicks. They treat us as expandable tools. They follow their whims and tend to think they're always right. My theory is that us humans made them that way, but it doesn't change the consequences."

Sarah had obviously not been expecting that kind of answer. "Why did you fight on their side, then? Why didn't you--"

"If you thought that Kronos was any better, then you're naïve," Annabeth said. "He was a force of destruction and he would have ravaged the world that we know. He manipulated and used my friend Luke."

Annabeth didn't know whether Sarah had any knowledge of Luke, but she didn't ask who he was. She averted Annabeth's eyes and for a long moment didn't say anything. Annabeth thought about reiterating that she would be welcome at Camp Half-Blood if she wanted, but she was afraid it would be counter-productive to push too hard. She wanted Sarah in an amiable enough state of mind that she would agree to breaking the curse in case Hazel and Percy couldn't do it.

"It's easy for you," Sarah said suddenly. 

"What's easy?"

"People have always been ill-at-ease around me." She wasn't looking at Annabeth as she spoke. "I guess this is my father's dubious legacy. No one has ever wanted me around. I fitted nowhere. Until Kronos asked me to join his army."

"You're reminding me of Nico," Annabeth said.

Sarah glared at her. "Are you trying to make me feel guilty?"

"Not particularly. You just really remind me of him. He used to think he didn't fit anywhere either."

Sarah looked away again. "Well, _he_ was on the winning side. We're not the same." 

There was no other attempt at conversation from Sarah after that. Annabeth wasn't sure if she'd managed to mollify her, so when Percy and Hazel came back, both splashed with mud, Annabeth anxiously searched their faces for signs of triumph or defeat.

Percy smiled at her tiredly and handed out to her the two pieces of a thin, warped sheet of lead. "I think we did it?" he said. "Hazel says she can't feel the curse's energy anymore."

Annabeth put the two pieces together and examined the Greek message engraved on the sheet of lead. It said, "Melinoe, bringer of madness and nightmares, cast your hate upon my enemy Percy Jackson. Visit his dreams with his regrets and fears from the past, the present, and the future. Haunt him until he can find no more respite." She raised her eyes to look at Sarah and shoved the two pieces of lead into her pocket.

"Rather nasty," she said.

Sarah shrugged. "Are you going to leave me alone, now?"

Percy dragged Annabeth to him as if he wanted to whisper, but he spoke loud enough that Sarah could probably hear him. "Are we really going to just leave her be? After what's she done?"

"We have to get back to Nico and check if the curse has really been broken."

"It would be stupid of me to try something like this again," Sarah said dryly.

"I don't know you," Percy said. "Maybe you _are_ stupid."

Hazel pulled at his arm. "Let's go," she said. "I want to check on Nico."

Percy capitulated after one last hateful look at Sarah. Before she left, Annabeth said, "Camp Half-Blood is in Montaul, at the end of Long Island."

"I won't come," Sarah said.

"Do what you want."

Hazel took them back to Camp Jupiter, but was so tired after that second jump that they had to half-carry her to the infirmary. There they found Reyna sitting at Nico's bedside, reading a book. Nico looked just the same as he had when they'd left and Annabeth's heart sunk. 

Reyna raised her head from her book. "What happened?" she asked imperiously. "Was the girl the one responsible for the curse?"

Without answering her Hazel stumbled to her brother and pressed two fingers against his neck. "His heart's beating," she said, her face breaking into a beaming smile. "I think he's just sleeping."

"He's exhausted," Percy said. He wasn't getting closer to the bed, but the way he looked at Nico was both pained and tender. "I know I was after the curse lifted."

Hazel had climbed into the bed next to Nico and was already fast asleep. Annabeth found herself another chair and settled for the wait. At some point she dozed off, and when she woke up she saw that Nico hadn't moved and everyone else was sleeping: Hazel on the bed curled against her brother, Reyna on her chair with her chin tucked to her chest, and Percy kneeling on the floor, his head resting over his crossed arms on the edge of the bed. She closed her eyes and fell into a deeper sleep. 

She didn't know what woke her up again, but the next time she opened her eyes it was to see Nico stir and then blink blearily. Percy was already awake, talking to him, "Hey, Nico. Welcome back, buddy."

Nico started to try rising on his elbows, even though he was obviously still very weak. Percy caught his shoulder, but instead of pushing him back he looped an arm around Nico's neck and hugged him against his chest. Annabeth had a very good view on Nico's confused expression. Percy pulled back a little, his hand cupping the side of Nico's neck, their faces still very close. Then he leaned in and kissed Nico. 

It happened very quickly. Annabeth barely had the time to see their lips touch that Percy had scrambled back, looking panicked.

"Uh," Nico said. He rubbed his eyes, as if wanting to make sure he wasn't still dreaming. "Percy?"

"I'm sorry!" Percy looked over at Annabeth, his mouth open but no word coming out.

Hazel and Reyna were both waking up, and they opened their eyes in time to see Percy jump to his feet and run away.

"What's wrong with him?" Reyna asked.

Hazel saw that her brother was awake and she hugged him. "How're you feeling?" she asked.

"Confused," Nico said. He leaned back against his pillow, looking too tired to sit. His eyes caught Annabeth's and he asked her, "What just happened?"

"I'll go check on him," Annabeth said, rising from her seat. "Don't worry. I'm glad you're all right."

It was still mostly dark outside, although the horizon was pale with early morning light and the camp was quiet. Annabeth easily found Percy in the small blue building that was Neptune's temple. He was standing in front of the altar, his hands in his pockets. 

He didn't turn to her when she entered, but he said, "I don't think asking my father advice about my love life is a good idea. I mean, here's a dude who's been cheating on his wife for millennia. I'm the son of a cheating bastard."

Annabeth leaned against the door frame. "This is pretty common among the gods," she said.

"I don't know what I was thinking." His voice was quivering. "No, that's a lie, I know what I was thinking."

"You were glad to see him waking up."

"I was thinking about never seeing him again." It was too dark for Annabeth to be able to see more than his silhouette, but she couldn't miss the way his shoulders shook. "It shouldn't hurt that much. But that's no excuse for what I did. I kissed him _right in front of you_ and--"

"Yeah, you're not very smooth for a cheating bastard."

He half-turned around. "Are you making _fun_ of me?" he asked, sounding incredulous. 

"A little," Annabeth said, smiling. "Hey, come here."

He approached cautiously, as if he feared some kind of trap. When he was within her reach she grabbed him, drew him into her arms and hugged him close. 

"Uhh," Percy said. "Are you--not mad, then?"

"No. No, I don't think I am. You know, since I realized you were attracted to Nico, I've been afraid."

"And I proved you right," Percy said miserably.

Annabeth pulled away and stroked his cheek with the back of her hand. "No, you made me understand something. I was afraid that this was a prelude to you leaving me. That your feelings for me had started to fade."

"That's not true! Annabeth, you totally have a right to dump my loser ass after what I just pulled, but never, ever believe that."

"I know, I know." She pressed a finger against his lips before he could rant more on the subject. In any other circumstances, it would have been his cue to playfully bite it. "When you said that you were choosing me, it meant a lot to me. It meant even more because I know you have genuine feelings for him."

"So, you mean that--" Percy's grip on her arms tightened. "You're giving me a second chance? Third chance at this point?"

"Not just that." Annabeth paused, giving herself time to think. She'd felt calm until now, astonishingly calm given that she'd just witnessed her boyfriend kissing someone else, but now that she was about to formulate her proposal her heart was beating faster. Was it really what she wanted? "It really bothered me that, whatever you chose, people would get hurt. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to complain that you said you were choosing me, but I didn't like hurting Nico and I hated to think that you would get hurt too."

"Annabeth--"

"Let me finish, please. I know you love me, you don't have to say it again. But you love Nico too, that much is obvious. You'd always regret hurting him and you'd wonder what it would be like, to really be with him."

"What are you saying then? If the alternative is hurting _you_ then I don't see--"

"What if you didn't have to choose? Nico and I could agree to--to share. We would have to ask Nico about it, of course, but that's a possible solution. We could try to make it work. Some people seem to manage it. Why not us?"

"And you would be all right with this?"

"I wouldn't suggest it if I wasn't all right with it. I'm not crazy, I know it would be a recipe for disaster. Are _you_ all right with it?"

"Annabeth, you have no idea how much I _want_ \--Is this real life? Am I actually awake?"

Annabeth obligingly pinched his cheek and then kissed it after he yelped in pain. "Nico has to agree too."

"Yes, yes, of course." Percy groaned and face-palmed. "Oh, gods, I'm such an idiot. He must be cursing my name right now. I'm a jerk."

"Stop beating yourself up and go apologize to him."

Holding hands, they went back to the infirmary together. The camp was showing signs of activity and already some of the campers were getting out of the barracks and added their numbers to the shimmering purple forms of the Lares, who were always kind of hanging around, although they were hard to see at night. In the infirmary they found Nico sitting in bed, looking more alert, while Hazel fed him tiny bits of ambrosia. He must have told his sister and Reyna what Percy had done, because when Annabeth asked Hazel and Reyna if they could give them a moment, the girls cleared away immediately. 

Percy's palm felt sweaty in Annabeth's hand. "I'm sorry," he said to Nico. "Gods, Nico, I'm sorry I'm such an impulsive jackass."

Nico's face was hard and his dark eyes full of mistrust. "What was that? Is it your idea of a joke, Jackson?"

"What? What would the joke even be about?"

"The fact that I'm gay." Nico's cheeks were red and he shot Annabeth a harsh look. "Or other things."

"Nico, no," Annabeth said. "Percy, sit down and tell him before he gets completely the wrong idea."

Percy sat down in the chair that Reyna had just vacated. "I'm sorry I sprang this on you when you'd just woken up, but the kiss itself came from a genuine place. I'm not mocking you. I--" Percy opened and closed his mouth, as if he were struggling to find the right words. "I really, really like you. Not--not as a friend. I mean, as more than a friend. I have for months, but I just only realized how deep my feelings ran. But I love Annabeth, and I thought you were over me."

Nico looked in shock. "I--don't--"

"I know, Annabeth told me. And she suggested something a little out of the box. She said that--" Percy's eyes flicked to Annabeth, as if checking whether she still approved. She gave him an encouraging nod. "That she and you could share me. Huh, that sounds like I'm a slice of leftover pizza. But that's the idea, basically. I'd still be in a relationship with Annabeth, but I'd also be… with you. At the same time. I mean, not _literally_ at the same time, unless you wanted--"

"I think he gets the picture, Percy," Annabeth said. 

Nico was holding himself very still, as if he were expecting them to break down laughing and show him the camera. 

"Nico?" Percy said anxiously. "What do you think? Not that you have to answer right away! You can think about it as long as you--"

"I don't need to think about it. But, Annabeth, would you really be okay with this?"

"I'm the one who suggested it!" Annabeth said, getting a little exasperated. "But you know, if you're so worried, there's something you two can do to help me check if I'm really okay with it. You two could kiss--a real kiss, this time--and I'll tell you how I feel about it."

Percy and Nico both looked at her as if they were wondering whether she was in her right mind, then they looked at each other. Percy shrugged with one shoulder.

"What do you think?" he said, and Annabeth could tell he was trying hard to sound nonchalant.

Nico narrowed his eyes. "Bring it on," he said.

He grabbed the collar of Percy's sweater and pulled him in. Percy flailed for a second before catching himself on the edge of the bed and sitting down there. Nico had only brought their mouths together but then he seemed unsure of what to do next, so Percy took the lead. He gave Nico a gentle, closed-mouth kiss, then progressively coaxed Nico's mouth open. Annabeth saw a flicker of his tongue as it traced Nico's lower lip, only teasing at first and then more insistent. Annabeth could attest that Percy was a good kisser and he seemed to be trying to put all of his skill in that kiss. It felt strange, watching it from the outside--she'd never had the occasion to observe Percy kissing someone. Strange, but not entirely unpleasant. He looked so dedicated to his task, kissing as though he thought Nico might still need convincing. She watched as he leaned closer into Nico and wrapped an arm around his waist; if Annabeth knew her boyfriend at all, his hand was soon going to slip under Nico's t-shirt--and yes, there it was.

Nico pushed Percy back, sagging against the bed's headboard. "Feeling dizzy," he panted.

"Right, sorry," Percy said, sounding a little breathless. "I didn't think about you not being--one hundred per cent."

"If you apologize one more time, I'll hit you." Nico closed his eyes. "Later." 

Percy turned to Annabeth. "What did you think?"

"It was fine," she said. A little more than fine, actually. Her cheeks were warm. But this was a thought to keep for later examination. "I'm still okay with the idea of this arrangement."

"If Nico needs to check his feelings, I have no issues kissing Annabeth," Percy said, but the jokiness of his tone held some uncertainty.

Nico snorted, keeping his eyes shut. "I've seen you two do couple-y things a hundred times," he said. "It used to kill me, but I'm fine with it now."

Nico's words made Percy wince. "Are we doing this, then?" he asked.

He nudged Nico, who opened his eyes. "This is pure insanity," he said, and Percy's face fell. "But I would always regret not at least trying."

He then rolled over and fell asleep almost instantly. Percy turned to Annabeth, confusion and joy at war on his face. 

"Not the enthusiastic response I was hoping for," he said, "but…"

"I think this is the best he could give you," Annabeth said.

"I couldn't say 'I love you.' I do love him, but I don't know, it felt like too much at once. Gods, what a day. And a night."

"I know, right?" Despite the few hours she'd slept, Annabeth felt drained. "We'll make it work, you'll see. I believe in you and me, and in Nico, too."

"Then I have to believe too."

They took the bed next to Nico's and slept away the rest of the morning there, wrapped into each other. 

\---

They stayed at Camp Jupiter for the next few days, but Nico didn't have the opportunity to enjoy their time there because he spent most of it sleeping. He had dreams, a lot of them nightmares, but he could tell they were different from the dreams he'd had under the curse. His recent dreams were just ordinary nightmares and he could deal with them most of the time--the curse had taken its toll and sometimes he got overwhelmed, but at least he could sleep and regain some strength.

He wasn't able to explore his brand-new relationship with Percy either, because during those rare moments when he was awake he was never alone with him. Under other people's scrutiny he found himself paralyzed, wondering how he was supposed to act. Should he just grab Percy for a kiss? Hold his hand, slip an arm around his shoulders or his waist, the way Percy and Annabeth did so easily with each other? Percy didn't try anything either, and at some point Nico started to think that he had maybe hallucinated the whole thing. Maybe it had been a dream born from the curse's dying spark, one last gift left behind to torment him. The way Percy had kissed him after Annabeth had asked could only belong to a dream.

Before they returned to Camp Half-Blood, they had to try and retrieve the SUV that they'd left on the side of the road when Nico had shadow-traveled to Camp Jupiter. The easiest way to do that was for Nico to shadow-travel again, but he had a hard time convincing Percy and Annabeth to let him do it. Very, very secretly, he liked that they cared enough to worry, but it was annoying too. Eventually they had to relent, because any other way would take too much time and spring break was almost over. 

Nico didn't accidentally send them to China, which was a point in his favor, but he passed out as soon as they stepped out of the shadows. When he woke up, he realized he was in a moving vehicle before he even opened his eyes. _Ah, so they found the car._ Percy had been fretting quite a lot about it. 

He blinked and saw that he was lying down in the backseat. Percy was driving, and he and Annabeth were talking in low voices. Not whispering as if they were being secretive, but rather like they were just trying not to wake him up. 

"--just forgot about it, all right?" Percy was saying. "With everything that was going on."

"So I'm morally bound to let you copy mine, if I'm following you," Annabeth said. "Mmh, let me ponder my negative answer."

"Oh, come on. I never ask you that kind of thing! Mrs. O'Reilly hates me and will enjoy the opportunity to give me detention way too much."

Annabeth laughed and slid a hand behind his shoulders to cup the back his head. "Oh, you poor thing."

Listening to them talk, to the familiarity and affection in their voices, Nico wondered if he would ever manage that kind of ease with Percy. If the proposition hadn't been a dream or an impulse that Percy now regretted, of course. Nico swallowed and tried to ignore the hollow feeling in his chest.

"Hey, you're awake! How're you feeling?"

Nico saw Percy's green eyes in the rearview mirror look at him. The eyes crinkled at the corner, as if Percy was smiling. Nico sat up, combing a hand through his hair.

"Fine," he said. "I see that you've found the car."

"Yeah, thanks the gods." Percy patted the wheel affectionately. "I really didn't want to have to tell Chiron that we'd gotten the car stolen. It's already bad enough that I'll have to explain how I bumped into a tree."

"How long was I sleeping?"

"About half-an-hour."

Nico was looking at his hands, more out of reflex than anything, when Percy said, "I already checked. You're not turning into a shadow."

"Oh. Thanks, that's--good to know."

Percy reached between the front seats, his hand fumbling as if he was looking for something. Nico watched him for a few seconds, puzzling over what he was trying to do.

"You lost something?" he asked.

Percy snorted. His hand found Nico's knee and followed the length of his leg until he could grab Nico's hand.

"Found it," he said.

They held hands for maybe a minute. Nico glanced nervously at Annabeth, because they hadn't discussed this and he wasn't sure what the etiquette was here, but she looked engrossed in a map that she'd found in the glove compartment. If she noticed what they were doing, she didn't say anything. The position was too uncomfortable for Percy to hold it for long, so he released Nico and put his hand back on the wheel as though nothing had happened. Nico sunk deeper into his seat and against the door, very tempted to melt into the shadows again.

"You know," Annabeth said, and Nico thought for one panicked second that she was going to comment on Percy and him holding hands. "Something Sarah said made me wonder."

"The less I think about her," Percy said hotly, "the better I am. She was ready to let Nico _die_."

"I know," Annabeth said, sighing. It felt like they'd had that conversation before. "It's just that when she talked about making the curse, she mentioned a woman. And then she cut herself off."

"I don't remember this," Percy said.

"You weren't exactly focused on details," Annabeth said.

"You think that someone else is behind this, then?" Nico said. 

"Someone helped her, at any rate. And if we don't know who that woman is and what her motives are--"

"Then she can strike again," Percy said. "Oh, well. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it, if we ever do. I badly want to go home right now."

"I know, I do too. This was just something to consider."

Nico considered it during the next few hours. If that woman wanted to hurt Percy, then she'd try again. Nico wouldn't have allowed that before, but he could allow it even less now that Percy and he were--a thing. Whatever that thing was. Who could that woman be? Someone who'd followed Gaia or Kronos? Using a demigod to do her dirty work made her sound like a goddess; otherwise, why not create the curse herself? The thoughts continued to spin around fruitlessly around Nico's mind for the rest of the day, until they stopped at a motel in the evening.

They took a double, as they had before. Percy eyed the clerk warily and Annabeth had to whisper furiously to him that, 'not all the motel clerks in the world were out to get them.' Nico honestly didn't give a thought to their sleeping arrangement when they settled in their room. He chose one of the beds and dropped his bag on it, assuming that Percy and Annabeth would share the other one as they'd always done before. It was only when he saw Percy stand in the middle of the room, hesitating, that it hit him that things were different now.

"Go with Nico," Annabeth said, pushing Percy toward the bed Nico that had picked. "I want to sprawl as much as I wish tonight."

"Gee, I feel wanted," Percy said.

Annabeth kissed him on the cheek. "Pouting doesn't suit you."

"Excuse you, I've been told pouting suits me very well." He joined Nico, dropping his bag at the foot of the bed. "Hey, man, mind if we share?"

"Sure," Nico said, aiming for the same detachment.

He was the last one to take his shower, and when he came out of the bathroom both Percy and Annabeth were in their respective beds. It was strange not to see them curled against each other under the covers. Nico slipped into his bed feeling all too aware of the presence of another body.

"The road's noisy," Annabeth declared. "I think I'll wear earplugs tonight." Nico watched her put the earplugs on, wondering where she'd gotten them. "Good night, boys."

Annabeth turned off the light on her side and turned her back to them. Nico and Percy looked at each other, and Nico was relieved to see some of his own uncertainty reflected on Percy's face.

"Should I turn off the light, then?" Percy said.

"Yeah, I guess."

In the dark they both lied on their backs, wide awake. At least, Nico was wide awake and he was pretty certain that Percy was too. The last time they'd slept in the same bed Nico had been so exhausted that he could barely think, and it had taken out a good share of the potential awkwardness for him. Now he didn't have that anymore, not to mention that the situation had significantly changed. Annabeth wouldn't have worn earplugs if she hadn't expected them to do something. Percy chuckled nervously, breaking Nico out of his thoughts.

"What?" Nico said. 

"No, just. This is ridiculous." Nico's heart clenched, and he waited for Percy to break off their arrangement before they'd even done much with it. "It's like the last time we shared a bed. I keep telling myself that this time I _can_ touch you--I mean, unless you don't want me to--but my body won't move."

"You wanted to touch me last time?"

It was true that Percy claimed to have been attracted to Nico for months, so it must have already been the case that time at May's house. But Nico had lived with his one-sided feelings for so long that it had become his brain's default mode. It was hard to believe that Percy had ever felt torn in the same way he had.

"Oh, man, you have no idea," Percy said. He lowered his voice to add, "I'll tell you something that I didn't tell Annabeth. One of the waking dreams I had at school involved you."

"Me? I don't know how flattered I am to feature in your nightmares."

"It wasn't a nightmare." Nico heard Percy swallow. "Ugh, this is more embarrassing than I thought to tell you this."

"What was it? You can't just leave me hanging. You've said too much already."

"In the dream, I knew I was at school. I was at my locker, and you just stepped out of the shadows. Which--I know I should have thought it was weird, but you know how it is with dreams: stuff happens and you just roll with it. Anyway, you were there, and you pushed me against my locker. And then--well, we made out. Until Annabeth showed up and I realized I'd been dreaming."

"Ouch."

"Yeah. I actually had a few other dreams about you when I was under the curse. I think the point was that I felt awful afterwards, like I was cheating on Annabeth."

"Oh." Nico couldn't wrap his mind around it. "I had no idea."

He heard Percy shift positions, turning on his side so as to face Nico. Faint lighting from the parking lot filtered around the curtains and Nico could see Percy watching him, just barely. Percy's eyes looked very dark.

"This is real life, now," Percy said.

"So it seems." For some reason, they'd both started whispering.

"So, can I? Touch you, I mean."

"Be my guest," Nico said, his pulse thundering in his ears.

He felt Percy touch his arm; he wasn't circling it with his fingers, only touching it lightly, as if he wanted to give Nico the opportunity to pull away. When Nico didn't move, Percy's hand brushed over his arm up to his shoulder, then curled around his neck with the fingers teasing the nape. Nico thought that Percy must for sure be feeling just how hard Nico's heart was pounding. 

He wasn't sure who moved first, but it seemed inevitable at this point that they would start kissing. Nico tried to emulate the way Percy had kissed him last time, maybe a little too forcefully but Percy didn't seem to mind if the way he eagerly opened his mouth for Nico was any indication. Nico flipped Percy onto his back so he could climb on top of him. Percy let himself be handled, laughing breathlessly against Nico's lips. His hand stroked down Nico's back and then up, bunching up his t-shirt. The feeling of Percy's warm hand against his bare skin made Nico's shiver--he wasn't used to being touched skin-to-skin under his clothes and the shocking intimacy of it bordered on too much. Nico couldn't have let go of Percy for anything in the world, though, not after wanting him so much for so long. When he bore down and their hips came into contact, almost accidentally, he had to bite his lips not to gasp: they were both wearing only boxer shorts and there was no mistaking the feeling of Percy's hard dick. All those talks of Percy being attracted to him had sounded too good to be true, until Nico was confronted to the reality of Percy's hard-on separated only by thin layers of cotton from his. It was all real, then; Percy _wanted_ him. 

But then Percy pulled back from their kiss, turning his face away. "That's, ah--feels a little weird," he panted.

Nico had been flying so high that he felt like he'd been shoved down a skyscraper. "What do you--Do you want to stop?"

"No, no." Nico had started moving away and Percy took hold of hips to keep him in place. "Nico, no. It's just--a little more dicks on the dancefloor than I'm used to. But when I said weird, I didn't mean _bad_ weird." He pulled Nico down so that they were flushed with each other again, and then rolled his hips. "Does it feel like I'm not into it?"

Nico felt Percy's dick twitch. "I--get your point."

He was about to start kissing Percy again, when he saw something strange lurk at the corner of his eye. It looked like a thin band of mist, floating idly between the two beds. Nico pushed himself up and sat between Percy's legs, sweeping a look at the rest of the room.

"Nico?" Percy asked.

"What's _that_?" Nico said, pointing his finger at the wisps of mist that lazily swirled around them and all over the room.

He was aware now that the temperature in the room had dropped noticeably. Without having to tell each other, Percy and he concertedly separated and put their jeans back on. Percy went to wake up Annabeth; she mustn't have been sleeping very deeply because she was alert almost instantly.

The swirls of mist were starting to coalesce into a form, but by now Nico had recognized that cold aura. Any trace of arousal had drained from him, his boner had wilted and died, and he now felt angry and ready to battle.

"Let's take this outside," he said, shoving his feet into his boots and grabbing his sword. "We don't want to destroy another room."

Percy and Annabeth followed his example and got dressed quickly. "Do you know what this is, Nico?" Percy asked.

Nico clenched his jaw. "It's _Melinoe_."

He rushed out of the room, running across the parking lot and the road that skirted it, aiming for the field on the other side of the road. As he'd thought, the mist had followed him outside and part of it was now taking the shape of a woman. The others became human too, but their form was less defined, still wispy. Melinoe's train of ghosts, Nico understood.

"Is that smoke-thing Melinoe?"

Nico startled, although it was only Percy and Nico had known he and Annabeth were on his heels. Since the curse, he was a lot more jumpy, prone to getting lost in his own head. He looked at Percy, who was scowling at the shape of mist. Nick's mind flashed briefly to the memory of Percy's hands on him, but he quelled it ruthlessly. This wasn't the moment to get distracted.

"Yes," he said tightly. "Melinoe and her ghost escort."

More ghosts kept popping out of thin air until the whole field was dotted with pale silhouettes. Most of them held some sort of weapons--swords, spears, axes, bows and crossbows--but they stood still, as if they were awaiting their orders. Annabeth appeared on Nico's other side, and it made Nico feel better to be flanked like this. Melinoe's shape was getting clearer and Nico wasn't surprised to see that she'd taken on Bianca's form. Bianca was dressed as a Hunter and her hair was pulled back into a braid, the way her ghost had always appeared to Nico. She wore the same haughty expression that she had in the curse dream Nico had had, and even knowing that it wasn't her, Nico's heart still squeezed painfully in his chest.

"My, my," the goddess said with Bianca's voice. She smirked. "What did I just see in that room?"

Nico flushed. He knew--he _knew_ , of course--that this was Melinoe speaking, messing with him, but the use of his sister's image made the situation infinitely more embarrassing. 

Not-Bianca's smile was cruelly mocking. "So you managed to convince Percy to take you as a pity fuck. Well done."

Bianca had never talked like this; Melinoe wasn't even trying to imitate her properly. And yet the words hit him painfully and reminded him of the things dream Bianca had said. _You're needy. You cling to people whether they want it or not._ He shook his head, trying to not let himself led off track, and glanced at Percy to gauge his reaction. 

He'd expected Percy to be angry or embarrassed at Melinoe's words, but instead Percy looked stricken. The expression on his face was so forlorn that it made Nico want to crush whatever was causing it.

"Percy," Nico said urgently, "whatever you're seeing, it's only Melinoe. You know how she works, you've seen it before."

"Percy Jackson, the boy who had no ghosts."

The voice wasn't Bianca's anymore; when Nico looked back at Melinoe he saw that she had taken Iapetus' form, now, with his silver eyes and hair, or rather Bob's since he wore the blue janitor uniform with the nametag on it.

"Am I your friend, Percy? Is it the way you treat your friends?" Melinoe-as-Bob stepped forward, and in one long stride she was towering over them. "No regrets, you said. Can you taste regret, now? How bitter it is?"

Percy wasn't moving, transfixed by the vision Melinoe offered him. Nico turned to Annabeth for support, but she was equally paralyzed. In an instant Melinoe shrunk and became Luke Castellan, not wearing the white chiton himation he had as Kronos--the only way Nico had known him--but jeans and an orange Camp Half-Blood t-shirt. He looked like a normal, albeit very handsome young man, with none of the unnatural aura of immortality around him. 

"Why didn't you save me?" Not-Luke said. "There must have been a way, if only you'd tried hard enough, had been _smart_ enough."

Nico gritted his teeth. Melinoe was having fun torturing his friends, but she'd made a mistake forgetting about _him_. He pulled the shadows to him, made them hard as steel and then threw them back at Melinoe in a shower of sharp pieces of darkness. Not-Luke shouted in pain and put up his arms to protect his face, but his cry was feminine and in a second he was Bianca again, her face covered with thin bloody cuts. Instead of making Nico hesitate it angered him, and he clutched his sword in a bloodless grip. 

"Don't you _dare_ use her like this!" he growled.

He would have lunged at her in a Percy-like mad attack, but he felt a hand on his shoulder and Percy's voice telling him, "Nico, look."

The first thing Nico looked at was Percy himself, instead of what Percy wanted him to see. Percy appeared lucid now, and so did Annabeth, which was a relief. But then Nico looked around him and saw that the ghosts were gathering around them in a silent glide. Soon enough, he could barely see Melinoe behind a shimmering forest of pale spirits. 

"You've escaped me once again," Melinoe said, sounding like herself now. "You even got my own mother to sell me out. But night is my domain and I want to see you _down_."

As if the last word was a cue of some sort, the ghosts rushed at them all at once. Instinctively, Nico moved so he'd stand back-to-back with Percy and Annabeth. The first ghost to reach him was a short, broad-shouldered man wearing a bronze breastplate and holding a spear. Blood dripped from a gouge on the side of his neck, but his face was blank. Nico dodged the pointy head of the spear aimed at him, side-stepped and slashed his sword at the ghost's unprotected throat. The spirit vanished, its essence sucked by Nico's sword, but Nico barely had the time to enjoy his victory before he had to block another attack.

As soon as he'd vanquished a ghost, another took its place. Not all of them were soldiers; some of them even wore modern clothes. Nico got almost skewered by a plump woman wearing high heels and a party dress, and using a pair of vicious-looking twin blades. An old man whose clothes were in tatters tried to bash his head in with a hammer. Nevertheless, Nico was doing well against the ghosts, but there were a lot of them and he was the only one who could actually touch and destroy them--any time Percy or Annabeth managed to get a hit, the ghosts dissolved and reformed in a matter of seconds. Nico could hear his friends' breathing progressively get more labored as exhaustion and frustration set in. He was getting tired too, his muscles and his lungs burning, sweat running down his back. Melinoe could probably draw an infinity of ghosts from the Underworld and Nico couldn't fight them one by one practically on his own.

"This isn't working!" he yelled to Percy and Annabeth.

"Gee, you think?" Percy replied, slashing through three ghosts at the same time in a truly impressive strike. The ghosts were dispersed in a misty cloud but reappeared a moment later. Percy growled in frustration. "No offense to you and yours, Nico, but I _hate_ ghosts."

"I prefer skeletons myself," Nico said. He itched to summon some skeleton warriors, but he knew from experience that they would be all too easy for Melinoe to destroy. 

"We need to get to Melinoe herself!" Annabeth said.

"Yes." Nico could pinpoint Melinoe's location as the only solid body standing amidst the ghosts. "I'll carve you a path. Follow me!"

He rushed at the ghosts head-first, trusting that Percy and Annabeth would follow him. His sword slashed and hacked at the spirits while his mind screamed at them, _Get OUT of my way!_ Most of the ghosts started scuttling away from him before his sword could even touch them. He reached Melinoe, who watched him make his way to her with an expression of deep annoyance. Moonlight made her pale right side glow faintly, but her mouth on her black, withered side was twisted into an ugly half-grimace.

"My master's bastard son," she said with contempt. "You're proving to be as resilient as a cockroach."

Percy and Annabeth crowded at his back. The ghosts had recovered from their momentary fright and were trying to surround them again. Nico turned his back on the goddess, facing the ghosts. It had started drizzling and his clothes were getting too damp for comfort. 

"I'll keep them busy," he told his friends. "Go!"

The ghosts swarmed him like a hive of bees, acting more aggressive than they had so far, probably reflecting their mistress's anger. Nico didn't dare look back to check on his friends, because if he got distracted even for one minute the ghosts would easily overwhelm him. The rain plastered his hair to his face and his arm was getting tired, but it made him fight all the harder. Ghost after ghost were sucked in by his sword until the dark Stygian iron felt almost warm, as if it were overheating. If he couldn't see how the fight with Melinoe was going, at least he could hear it: grunts of effort from Percy and Annabeth, Percy's occasional war cry, and, above all, Melinoe talking, although she didn't talk in her own voice. 

"You should have saved me."

"You let me die. How is it fair that you survived and I didn't?"

Nico vaguely recognized some of the voices as being from campers who'd died during the Titans War--Charles Beckendorf from Cabin 9; Silena Beauregard, who'd acted as a spy for Luke but had died a hero. Some others he couldn't identify, but Melinoe did what she always did: poke at weaknesses, play with regrets and self-recrimination. It was the way the curse had worked, too. 

"Shut UP!"

It was Percy who'd shouted. Nico noticed that it wasn't raining anymore, except that when he looked up he saw that it wasn't really that the rain had stopped but that it _had been_ stopped. Percy must be doing this. Amazed, Nico watched the little drops of rain that were suspended in the air, gleaming in the moonlight, hovering over their heads as far as he could see. The atmosphere had a sort of ominous stillness to it. Even the ghosts seemed to be feeling it because they stopped fighting Nico for a moment, which gave him the opportunity to have a look at was happening with Melinoe and his friends.

Melinoe was encased in a bubble of rain water, which wasn't a small feat as she was wearing Bob's form again. Percy and Annabeth faced her together, shoulder to shoulder, their chests heaving from the fight. 

"You doomed me with your friendship, Percy Jackson," Bob's mournful voice said. " _Nico_ was my true friend, and it looks like you're going to ruin him too."

Percy tensed, and the water that floated in the air as well as the water surrounding Melinoe wavered with him. Nico felt a hot surge of anger at seeing the goddess try to use him against Percy. He opened his mouth to say as much, but then saw some of the ghosts creep in direction of Percy and Annabeth.

" _Don't move_ ," he ordered them. A wave of agitation ran through the crowd of ghosts and Nico glared at them. "No one _moves_."

The ghosts stilled in the grasp of Nico's power. Holding them all under his will was as hard as climbing a mountain with weights tied to his ankles, but at the same time he felt powerful, whole in a way he hadn't felt since last summer. Percy glanced over his shoulder and his eyes widened when he saw the ghosts stand frozen like an army of stone warriors. He addressed a small, admiring smile to Nico, who felt himself get warm all over.

Melinoe obviously wasn't as appreciative. When she changed from Bob to Bianca again, Nico knew that the next tirade would be for him. But, before she had the time to say anything, Annabeth cut her off, "You're one to talk, Melinoe."

This threw not-Bianca for a loop. "What?" she said. 

"When Percy and Nico met you last time, you were whining because Hades didn't let you out to play as much as you wanted to. Now you whine because we managed to break the curse. It's just as Percy said: will you just _shut up_?"

"Don't speak to me that way, little girl!"

The ghosts quivered, straining against Nico's hold. Nico's entire body was shaking and a drop of sweat trickled down his temple. 

"You said it yourself, your own mother gave us your name," Annabeth went on, her voice getting stronger and more assured. "It was easy, too. We just had to complete one ridiculous little quest. I'm sure she would even have given it for free, even though she hates Nico, except that it's not the way things are done."

Bianca's form blurred and Melinoe appeared as herself again, her pale cheek marred by an angry blush.

"You don't know what you're talking about. Kill that girl!" she yelled to the ghosts. "Kill her!"

Nico almost blacked out from the effort of countering her order, but he could still hear Annabeth's mocking voice loud and clear, "Persephone probably wanted you to _just. Shut. Up._ "

Melinoe let out an unarticulated cry and Nico's vision cleared just in time for him to see Melinoe's prison of water freeze, crack and explode. The shards of ice flew at her in a cloud of tiny blades, but before they could hit her the goddess had vanished, taking with her the train of ghosts. The field was now dark and empty except for the three of them, and the rain started again when Percy tumbled to his knees. Annabeth kneeled down with him, making sure he was all right. Nico would have rushed to his side too but his own legs buckled and he sat down hard on the wet ground. He was going to get mud all over his jeans but he was too tired to care. 

"You're a menace," Percy told Annabeth, laughing exhaustedly. "Like, ouch, I almost pitied the goddess."

"Well, I don't. She had it coming."

They touched foreheads and then kissed, and Nico watched them a little awkwardly, wondering if he should just go and let them have a moment. When he tried, though, he found that his legs were still too weak to hold him up, so his retreat plan was thwarted. Annabeth helped Percy up and Nico finally managed to drag himself to his feet before they got to him. Then Percy cupped his face in his hands and kissed him too, deep and hard.

"That was amazing, what you did with the ghosts," he said. "Really, really hot."

Nico's brain wouldn't work properly, so it took him a moment to reply, "You were... not so bad yourself."

"Can we tell each other how amazing we are once we're out of the rain?" Annabeth said. "I'm freezing."

This was a fair point, so they headed back to the motel, drenched, muddy and exhausted. When they entered the room and Annabeth turned on the overhead light, they immediately saw that someone was sitting on one of the beds. The woman had dark hair that fell over her shoulders and sparkling multicolor eyes; Nico had never been attracted to women, but it was impossible not to acknowledge that she was gorgeous beyond words, and the simple summer dress that she wore only enhanced her beauty. Therefore, he immediately knew that this must be Aphrodite, the goddess of love herself, who was sitting on the bed where Nico and Percy had been making out earlier.

Aphrodite clapped her hands and let out a squeal of delight. "Bravo, oh, bravo! I knew you would be up to the challenge, but you three exceeded my expectations."

"What're you doing here?" Percy asked her in a tone that was borderline rude.

Aphrodite didn't seem to mind. "Oh, you two are positively adorable. I knew you would be, but that kiss right now confirmed it."

Nico suddenly realized that she was talking about he and Percy. Had she been spying on them? Why did she care what they were doing? Nico felt completely drained and all he wanted was for Aphrodite to get off his bed so he could lie on it. 

Percy had become very pale. "What did you do?" he asked in a hollow voice. Then, more angrily, "What did you _do_? You didn't make--"

"You want to know if I made you fall in love with Nico? Or made him fall in love with you again? Oh, no, I only do that to the people I really don't like. You, I like. Yours and Nico's feelings were always there, but you needed a little something to set things into motion. I did promise you that your love life would be interesting."

"Set things into motion--" Annabeth repeated. "Oh, no. That was _you_. You're the woman who suggested the curse to Sarah. Percy could have died. Nico almost did!"

Aphrodite waved a perfect white hand dismissingly. "I knew you would find a way. You've faced much worse threats than a silly little curse."

"So, what," said Percy, "you wanted to break up Annabeth and me? That was your end game?"

"I didn't have an end game, per se. The journey mattered more to me than the end. You, Percy, in love with two people and torn between them. Annabeth, mortally afraid to lose the boy you love. And you, _Nico_." The goddess's whole attention was suddenly directed at Nico and it felt like all of the sun's warmth and light was thrown at his face. He very much preferred the shadows. "Taking on that curse for the sake of your love! Without any hope that your feelings would be returned! I didn't expect that, but what a twist." She swept an elegant finger under her eye. "What a twist."

Nico's cheeks were burning and he wanted to snap at the goddess to shut up. But they'd already gotten on one goddess' bad side and it was more than enough for a night's work, so he bit his tongue. 

Percy didn't have the same qualms. "Well, I hope you're happy," he said archly. 

"I _am_ happy! I said I cared more about the journey, but I enjoyed the end very much too. I will watch the way this little _ménage à trois_ of yours develop with a lot of interest."

A shiver ran down Nico's spine at the idea of being observed by the goddess of love as he fumbled through his first relationship. He'd never met Aphrodite before but he'd met her son Cupid, and he was starting to develop the same sort of hatred for both. Why were the gods so creepily invested in his love life? 

"That's great," he said in a tone that made it clear how not great he thought it was. "We're really tired, though, so I don't think it's going to get very interesting in the next few hours."

"Of course, of course, I can take a hint. Give Piper my regards!

The goddess disappeared in a shower of pink lights. When she was gone Percy grunted, pulling hard at his hair.

"Ugh! She's such a piece of work," he said. "We're not free entertainment!"

"To the gods, I guess we are," Annabeth said. She smiled at Percy and Nico. "We'll show her entertainment. But in the meantime, I'm claiming dibs on the shower!"

She disappeared into the bathroom before they could protest. Nico took off his muddy jeans and tumbled onto the bed, face pressed into one of the pillows. It smelled like Percy and he buried his face deeper. Half a minute later he felt the mattress shift with added weight and then an arm looped over his waist. He fell asleep like that, exhausted but strangely content.


	5. Epilogue

They managed to get back to camp safe and sound, and things returned to their normal routine, or at least as normal as Percy's life ever got. Nico told them that Hades had given Melinoe a good dressing down--not for the curse, mind you, which the Lord of the Underworld apparently thought was fair game, but for attacking them afterwards. Like any bully, it probably wouldn't deter the goddess forever, but at least for the moment they were left in peace. Percy was banned from ever using the SUV again, and he could swear that Argus was giving side-eye every time they saw each other, which coming from a being with multiple eyes was a seriously disturbing experience. Percy felt bad about it, of course, but he had many other things on his mind. 

First, there was the DSTOMP, which had been a looming threat on Percy's horizon for the whole school year. They finally passed it, and it was so awful that Percy almost wished he had a Titan or a Giant or a god to fight instead. Annabeth, on the other hand, found it 'stimulating.' Then, there was the development of his relationship with Nico. They'd found time to properly discuss boundaries with Annabeth and there was no more awkwardness whenever Percy kissed one of them in front of the other. Because he was so busy with school, Percy didn't see Nico as often as he wished, but Nico seemed to be doing a lot better with shadow-travel and sometimes he just popped up unannounced on the fire escape. Percy's parents were getting used to it. 

When it was just the two of them together there was, admittedly, not a lot of talking going on. Which was to say that they spent most of their time making out like the horny teenage boys they were. In some respects, Percy was the more experienced of the two and he had fun showing Nico the ropes, but there were other things that were completely novel for both of them and that they had to discover together. Sometimes Percy addressed a rude gesture to the ceiling, just in case Aphrodite was watching. 

One mid-June day, just after the end of school, they were both hanging out in Percy's room, playing video games. Percy was the one who'd introduced Nico to it, because of course there'd been no video games in the 1930s' and Nico had never had the opportunity to play when he was roaming the Underworld or whatever he used to do when he was out of Percy's radar. Percy loved watching Nico play, because Nico gave it the same serious focus he gave to real life fights. 

They were playing a zombie-killing game, which at first Percy had feared Nico wouldn't like because it hit too close to home, but given the way Nico was hunched forward and his frown of concentration as he played, he seemed to be enjoying it. He was also totally kicking Percy's ass, mostly because he was giving it his all while Percy kept sneaking glances at him and losing his focus. In the drawer of his nightstand was a letter containing his results to the DSTOMP, and since he'd gotten it his mind had been running around in circles thinking about the future. Since last summer he'd had pretty clear plans for the next few years, but now Nico was part of the equation and had to be taken into account. 

Percy cleared his throat. "Hey, Nico," he said.

"What?" Nico said, not very amiably. 

"Hey, can we pause? I want to talk to you about something."

Nico looked at him then, seeming to recognize that Percy was being serious and not just trying to distract him. He paused the game and dropped the controller between his legs. His face was closed-off, which told Percy that he was expecting a very different conversation from the one Percy wanted to have.

"I'm not breaking up with you," he said quickly.

Nico's shoulders dropped a little. "What is it, then?"

"I got my results for the DSTOMP. I passed."

"Congratulations," Nico said, giving him a genuine smile and nudging him with his foot.

"Annabeth passed too."

"I didn't know that was ever into question."

"Well, no. But that means--I've been thinking about next year."

"What's there to think about? You'll live on the NRU campus, won't you? This is what you always planned."

"Yeah, I will. Annabeth and I will. I was just wondering about _you_. What're you going to do?"

Nico shrugged. His face was hard to read and Percy couldn't tell for sure what was going through his head, but he was starting to get the sense that Nico had assumed he was simply not included in Percy and Annabeth's plans, and that things were going to happen as if Percy and he had never gotten together.

"It's not like I can get into NRU," Nico finally said. 

"No, of course not, but I was just thinking… Hazel and Frank and Reyna have told you that you have a place in New Rome. So, like, why not come with us? It's not like you can't visit Camp Half-Blood in the summer, or whenever you want; Annabeth and I will visit it too, of course. It's never not going to be an important place for us. But I want--I want you around."

"I'll have to think about it," Nico said slowly.

"Oh." Percy had _not_ expected that; even if Nico looked content at Camp Half-Blood, Camp Jupiter had his sister, Reyna and, well, Percy himself very soon. He tried to hide his discomfiture and said, "Yeah, naturally, no pressure. You tell me when you've made your decision."

They started playing again, but it was a lot more half-hearted on both their parts. Percy won after all, but victory had a bitter after-taste. 

\---

The beginning of summer meant that it was time to go back to Camp Half-Blood, and even if Annabeth liked school, she would always think of the camp as her home. She kept expecting for Sarah to show up, but so far there was no sign of her and Annabeth didn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed. Jason and Piper were there, though, as well as Leo, who'd come back from his months-long trip with Calypso. Percy and Calypso had shared a very awkward reunion hug, but it didn't look like there were any lingering feelings from either of them, which was good because Annabeth didn't think that she would bear to share Percy with yet another person--not that it looked like Leo would go for it, anyway. 

Annabeth told Piper everything that had happened with Percy and Nico, and the state of their current relationship. When she mentioned Aphrodite's role in those events, Piper closed her eyes and let out a groan.

"Oh, mom, _no_. I should have known she was up to no good."

"How could you have known?"

"I saw her a couple of months ago, and she seemed really excited about something. She kept talking about 'young love' and 'the fires of passion tearing people apart', and 'hearts split in two.' I figured it was just her usual thing, but she also asked if I'd heard from my friends… I didn't want her to poke her nose into your business, so of course I didn't tell her anything about Percy having feelings for Nico."

"I don't think she needed anyone to tell her. I assume she just knows these things. And even if you'd realized what she was planning, there was no way you could have done anything to stop her."

"I know. She's a goddess; I'm just her puny mortal daughter." Piper heaved a sigh. "Still, on her behalf, you have my deepest apologies. She sucks and I'm sorry."

Annabeth took her hand and squeezed it. "If we start to apologize on our god parents' behalf then we'll never have time for anything else. I'm mad at Aphrodite for what she did, but after all things did turn out well in the end."

Piper studied her closely. "So, how is the arrangement working for you? You know you can be honest with me."

"It's fine. Really, it is, a lot more than I would have thought if you'd told me about it six months ago. Percy still acts the same with me. I know when he sees Nico, although I don't get many details about what they do, and sometimes we hang out the three of us together and it's nice."

"If you're happy, then it's all that matters. I--oh, hey. Look, Nico's coming our way."

Annabeth and Piper were sitting by the canoe lake while Jason and Percy were playing in the water. Annabeth looked at where Piper was pointing and saw that Nico was walking the trail that led back to the cabins, obviously heading for them.

"Hi, Piper," he said, hands in his pockets. "Annabeth, can I talk to you for a moment?"

"Sure," Annabeth said.

"Okay, I'll get my swimsuit and go try the water," Piper said, jumping to her feet. Before she left, she cast Annabeth a look that meant, _I'll be there if you need someone to talk to._

Nico sat where Piper had been a moment before, although not quite as close, and didn't say anything for so long that Annabeth started to get uneasy.

"You wanted to tell me something?"

He startled, as if he'd forgotten she was sitting there with him. "Yes. It's about a conversation I had with Percy the other day. He asked me to come to New Rome with the two of you."

"Yeah, I know. He told me about it."

Nico gave her a strange look. "And you're okay with it?"

"Yes. Why wouldn't I be?"

"I mean, I figured that you were okay with sharing as long as--As long as I wasn't too much in the way. Moving with you to New Rome makes it sound like Percy wants to put us on equal footing."

Annabeth looked at him and the way his jaw ticked, how his eyes kept drifting to the lake where Percy was swimming and then away, as if he didn't want to be caught watching. She was suddenly and dizzyingly aware of just how much power she held over their fragile arrangement. If she said that she wanted Percy and Nico's relationship to remain secondary to her own relationship with Percy, then neither of the boys would go against her. But at the very same moment, she also realized that she didn't want that. When Percy had told her that he chose her at Camp Jupiter, it had meant the world to her. Now, though, she wanted to give Percy and Nico's side of the arrangement the room to develop and become as strong as what she had with Percy, as well as giving her and Nico the chance to find their own rhythm with each other. 

"Nico, look at me," she said gently. He looked at her, warily. "If I hadn't wanted you to come with us, then I would have told Percy about it. He and I have a lot of history with each other, but that doesn't mean I want to keep you as an after-thought in his mind. We're in this together, now."

"Okay. I guess by 'this', you mean Percy?"

"He's a handful."

Nico's mouth curved at the corner. "That he is."

They heard both of their names being called and saw that Percy was standing in the water, waving at them. His wet torso glistened in the sun and his swim trunks clung to his body in very interesting ways. Annabeth and Nico waved back, then shared a look of total complicity. For once, they were exactly on the same wavelength. 

\---

Social campfires weren't his favorite part of camp life, but Nico had to acknowledge that they were slowly growing on him. With the influx of campers due to the beginning of summer, tonight's campfire was particularly animated. Wedged between Calypso on one side, and Jason and Piper on his other side, Leo was drawing a lot of attention with the colorful account of his adventures around the world with Calypso. Next to him, Calypso ate roasted marshmallow and occasionally rolled her eyes. Rachel Dare, who'd come back recently from her quest of Apollo that had led her the gods knew where, was sitting perilously close to the fire--Nico was seriously concerned that the black shawl that marked her as the Oracle was going to burn. 

Nico himself was sitting between Percy and Annabeth, which was a rare occurrence. When the three of them were together, Percy tended to find himself naturally in the middle. Annabeth was the one who'd sat next to Nico, and Nico suspected her of having done so because she wanted him to talk to Percy. Nico watched Percy's profile, which the light from the fire sheathed in moving shadows. 

"Percy," Nico said in a low voice. Too low--Percy's attention was on Leo's story, and he was chuckling at something Leo had said. Nico poked him in the ribs with his elbow. "Hey, Percy."

"Ow, what did you do that for?"

"I didn't hit that hard, you big baby. I just wanted to tell you something."

Percy immediately looked serious, and even a little bit apprehensive. "What is it?"

"I'll go with you. In New Rome."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

Percy's face lit up at Nico's words, and Nico thought for a second that he was going to kiss him. Only their closest friends were aware of the nature of their relationship. Maybe that would change one day, but for now Nico preferred not to give everyone another reason for looking at him sideways. Although, to be honest, this past year it hadn't been as bad as he'd feared. Percy managed to restrain himself and only gave Nico a wide beaming smile.

"This is great," Percy said. "Thank you."

"I'm not doing this as a _favor_."

"No, I know. I'm just so glad. It'll be great."

Percy kept watching him with that stupid grin and Nico had to look away. It still caught him off guard that he had now the ability to make Percy happy like that. It was a nice feeling, although it was balanced by the fact that he could also make Percy _sad_. When he looked in Annabeth's direction he saw that she was smiling at him too, maybe because she'd heard him or had guessed what he'd said. Nico decided to look elsewhere until Percy and Annabeth were down to a normal level of emotional. 

Some of the campers were clamoring for the Apollo kids to start the sing-along and Nico groaned. "Here it comes," he said.

"Aw, sing-alongs are fun," Percy said. 

"Maybe because _you_ can carry a tune."

"No one cares if you can sing right when we're all singing at the same time. Besides, you don't sound so bad."

"Yeah, right." Nico felt his cheeks heat up, maybe because he'd just remembered Percy telling him one time that Nico's voice turned him on. "Because you're so objective."

"Exactly. I'm the picture of impartiality."

Will started strumming his guitar while Austin sang, gesturing at the rest of the camper to sing with him. Soon everyone was giving their voice to one of the camp songs about the gods. All the Olympians got a mention in the song, and recently Nico had noticed that someone--he wasn't sure who--had added a verse about Hades, which he admitted was a nice thought. Into the third or fourth song, Nico felt fingers brush tentatively against his. They were sitting close enough to each other that it was probably hard for other people to see what they were doing, and Nico let Percy loosely weave their fingers together. 

The enthusiastic singing had reached a peak--Nico saw that even Calypso was trying to sing along during the choruses. Watching his fellow campers' faces in the orange fire light, Nico realized that he was going to miss it here. It was the only real home he'd known since Bianca and he had lost their mother, and part of him was sad that he was going to leave just when he felt like he'd found his place here. The other part was tentatively excited about his new life at Camp Jupiter. Hazel was going to be thrilled when he'd tell her about it. He tried to focus on that part. 

At some point during the last song, Nico started to softly hum to himself.


End file.
